Supplemental Selective Fishery Season, A Proposal

Closure of the catch-and-release, selective gear rules season on North Puget Sound rivers compels the thereby deprived anglers and guides to petition for relief. In lieu of such closure, the Washington Fish and Wildlie Commission is requested to consider and approve, and the Department of Fish and Wildlife is tasked to devise and implement a Supplemental Selective Fishery Season on the Olympic Peninsula.

Proposal: Open under "catch-and-release only," selective gear rules from March 1 to April 30, 2001 would be the following rivers: the Quillayute River System (Bogachiel, Calawah,Dickey, Sol Duc and Quillayute); and the Hoh, Queets, Clearwater, upper Quinalt and Humptulips Rivers.

Rationale: Accustomed after twenty years to a quality spring steelhead season, anglers and their guides from the state's population core deserve an inviting fishery as solace for sport lost. The designated Olympic rivers will experience inordinate fishing pressure from anglers displaced from Puget Sound waters. The proposed Supplemental Selective Fishery Season would limit expected impact on the resource yet promote maximum recreational opportunity.

Rather than diminish, let us increase what is right about fishing in Wahington. Our state fish is too valuable to be caught only once.

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"Wildlie" Commission?? Good one, John, intended or not!

How about targeting SW washington rivers and leave the Olympic Peninsula out of it altogether?

Man, I get sick thinking about all the dudes who are going to migrate out here this spring.

C-n-R or not, the rivers out here are going to be like a f______freeway. It sucks! And it's also my opinion that many of your stated rivers can't handle this impending wave of fishermen....Christ, they're already crowded.

I guess my position is don't look at the peninsula as a saving grace for the entire state's fishermen. The rivers are already over-pressured and drawing more attention to them by merely mentioning them isn't going to do the fishery any good out here.

I know your idea is conservation-minded and you also care about the fish. It's just frustrating to think everyone is going to be making a beeline out here looking for an experience that will be hard to find, much less, enjoy with the huge wave of guys on the way.

How about BC? It's actually closer for you northern boys isn't it?

Eric, I think you missed John’s whole point. The last thing that the Puget Sound drainage guys want to do during March and April is to go to the coast.
We already have a great C&R fishery for trophy size fish right here! Something most of us cherish. WDFW is going to shut it down due to their perception of limited returns of adults.
Their data is better than ours but not that great. (Subject for another thread).
I think what John has proposed is two sided: one simply stated “don’t manage to extension the coastal fish like our Puget Sound fish have been.
The other is a call to arms of recreational fishers to get involved in the management of the resource.
If native/wild populations are spiraling down then selective harvest measures should have been implemented before we got to total clousers.

Want to do something about it?

GET INVOLVED!

Beezer

I agree and always supported the need to be proactive and protect the peninsula streams through C&R fisheries. And I will continue to support that. I was just hoping we didn't have to do it to protect them from lost opportunity on other streams. I also can't hide the fact that I'm also disappointed in the increased guide pressure these streams will see from all the displaced guides. I don't like it but,unfortunely it's going to happen.

Eric.....agree with you on this one!!!

Beezer:

I hear you talking but after 35 years in Grays Harbor I see the impact of the suburb people that come by the 100's to all the rivers of the Olympic Peninsula. Over crowding, trash left, boat launches jammed full, native stocks of salmon and steelhead at a historial low level. Many of the rivers are now "guided to death", got to get those fish for thier "paying clients", ugh!!! Now some of the peninsula rivers are just as bad as the S.W. Washington rivers. Takes the fun out of fishing but I'll still be there...

"Worse day sport fishing, still better than the best day working".......

AS for southwest Washington..

There are no streams here that can provede a quality experience like the puget sound and OP rivers can. Rivers here typicaly only get a coupkle hundred wild winter steelhead a piece. And some of our rivers are completely closed during parts of march and april. to but it simply our rivers don't have any fish and are not viable high quality fisheries. The washougal,lewis,kalama,cowlts, toutle,elochomin,grays,naselle have no native runs worh the time and effort of a guide. Otherwise i'd have a job

As a Bellingham boy got me a Canadian license righty here in my back pocket

Later

Paul

I'd be all for it The shift is going to take place wheteher we like it or not ... we've seen it with salmon and more with the wild steelies in recent years (interestingly enough, a thought towards another thread comes to mind ... hatchery steelhead traffic has plummeted here over the last decade)) ... we need to make an adjustment. Part of the new group's formation is the need for this.

John, you are more than right on.

As a former Skagit guide and someone who has fished the Penninsula for decades, we need to protect what we have left. If even half of the anglers that used to frequent the Skagit/Sauk travel west, holy $#@* the pressure will be unbearable. Not only would John's proposal protect all wild returnees, it would open up more water and give us another few weeks. Best of both worlds.

I have copied this proposal and I plan to send it off to the WDFW heads soon.