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Notes from Liz at NSIA:
Yesterday in Vancouver the States of Oregon and Washington met to set the treaty and non treaty commercial fishing seasons on Summer Chinook.
Two items you need to know:
First, the gillnetters are very unhappy with the 1,500 summer chinook that they were given by the Washington and Oregon Commissions. They testified that they were going to sue, and go to the legislature to take more fish away from the sportfishers. They were particularly angry about the set aside of summer chinook for the upper Columbia. At a N. of Falcon meeting that Dan Parnel and I attended, certain gillnetters blew up and said that the farmers up in Brewster and Pateros Washington don't deserve any of these fish! They want a 50/50 sharing of the non treaty fish, which would shut down the sport fishery below Bonneville, and curtail the sportfishery in the mid and Upper Columbia in Washington.
What is most ridiculous is that about 40-50% of the summer chinook are harvested in the Ocean by commercial fishermen already! Then consider that historically, they were practically fished out of existence by commercial fishing!
Second, on the sport side, the states have opened a full retention sport fishery on summer chinook. You will recall that all the major sport groups pounded on the departments to have the summer chinook fishery selective. They tell us that we may catch all of our 1,500 fish before the run update, and the summer chinook fishery will close. This is based on the fact that in the fishery from June 1-11 (which is counted as springers, even though they are mostly summers in the river) there have been 8,700 angler trips that have handled 1,970 chinook. 800 of them have been hatchery fish.
Amazingly, that is nearly eleven angler trips per kept fish! And the fishery is going strong!
If we keep the wild fish, this fishery could close in less than two weeks.
So folks have asked, when we can get 11 angler trips out of one kept hatchery fish, why are we killing wild fish? Why are we gillnetting at all when the treaty tribes will be selling summer chinook, and the ocean troll has already harvested a large percentage of these fish?
Yesterday in Vancouver the States of Oregon and Washington met to set the treaty and non treaty commercial fishing seasons on Summer Chinook.
Two items you need to know:
First, the gillnetters are very unhappy with the 1,500 summer chinook that they were given by the Washington and Oregon Commissions. They testified that they were going to sue, and go to the legislature to take more fish away from the sportfishers. They were particularly angry about the set aside of summer chinook for the upper Columbia. At a N. of Falcon meeting that Dan Parnel and I attended, certain gillnetters blew up and said that the farmers up in Brewster and Pateros Washington don't deserve any of these fish! They want a 50/50 sharing of the non treaty fish, which would shut down the sport fishery below Bonneville, and curtail the sportfishery in the mid and Upper Columbia in Washington.
What is most ridiculous is that about 40-50% of the summer chinook are harvested in the Ocean by commercial fishermen already! Then consider that historically, they were practically fished out of existence by commercial fishing!
Second, on the sport side, the states have opened a full retention sport fishery on summer chinook. You will recall that all the major sport groups pounded on the departments to have the summer chinook fishery selective. They tell us that we may catch all of our 1,500 fish before the run update, and the summer chinook fishery will close. This is based on the fact that in the fishery from June 1-11 (which is counted as springers, even though they are mostly summers in the river) there have been 8,700 angler trips that have handled 1,970 chinook. 800 of them have been hatchery fish.
Amazingly, that is nearly eleven angler trips per kept fish! And the fishery is going strong!
If we keep the wild fish, this fishery could close in less than two weeks.
So folks have asked, when we can get 11 angler trips out of one kept hatchery fish, why are we killing wild fish? Why are we gillnetting at all when the treaty tribes will be selling summer chinook, and the ocean troll has already harvested a large percentage of these fish?
