I would be in favor of a statewide barbed hook ban - we do have enough studies to show that barbless hooks kill fewer released fish. I pinch my barbs down pretty much by habit for everything - I do a lot of saltwater fishing where it is required anyway. Barbs don't help the fish stay on at all unless you are in the habit of slack lining your fish all the time. I have been fishing barbless on the Columbia all spring chinook season - I catch at least a fish a trip, 90% wild, and I can't make them come unhooked even if I try.

I would also be in favor of a ban on trout fishing in anadromous waters - I know the rules more or less prohibit this already with the large minimum size and wild fish release, but still there are people "trout" fishing all the time - killing and releasing smolts in blissful ignorance. If this were outlawed then fewer people would be doing it and a few that do might even get caught.

I think a minimum hook size is appropriate also - nothing smaller than a #2 in anadromous waters. A big hook is not as likely to get swallowed by a smolt, and if barbless will do little damage most of the time.

I'm not in favor of banning bait - there is no evidence that more fish are killed biting a bait than anything else. And from personal experience a big chunk of bait on a big hook does not catch near as many smolts as a small rooster tail - I too was once ignorant of the anadromous life cycle when I first moved over here from eastern WA as a kid. Finally, if we ban bait how will anyone ever catch a sturgeon - never heard of the artificial that will catch one of those puppies, outside of perhaps dynamite or a lead-wrapped treble.

H20 you'll find if you look nonselectively at "ALL AVAILABLE" scientific studies that the overall answer is inconclusive on use of bait vs no bait and barbed hooks vs barbless hooks. Sorry but thats science for you. What it comes down to is this...choose your 50% of science that supports your "Ideology" and use it politically to support your imposition of your ideology, ethics or religious beliefs on others thru laws and regulations unsupported by conclusive science. Myself...I can't support this method...but I strongly support personal choice in choice of ethics in our fisheries. In the end irregardless of current law and any changes made to them this is the only way any thing will ever change as long as there is no one to enforce the laws.

As to displaying dark fish....would you support a complete closure of all of our rivers from February thru June? Me ...I choose not to make the issue personal.....guy wants to post pics of large dark fish...cool....as long as they practice careful cnr methods on those fish not a problem.

BTW I've rarely hooked any smolts anywhere specifically on bait anymore than on nonbait presentations. Maybe I fish the wrong rivers.
I have though hooked in the jaw a fair number of searun cutts on some rivers but inconsistently.

This brings up a good point, How many of you can tell a "trout" (smolt) bite from a steelhead bite?

HMMMM.... Getting turbo, (smolt) bites? then don't set the hook and drive a barb through junior's brain.

Hmmmmm.... Getting a good thump on a bait of eggs? then set the hook and catch a "daddy".

Not rocket science.

Aaron

By the way H2O,
There will be many of pics to come in the future, and YES almost everyone of them will be fish that are caught on bait...

And back to the SQUAWFISHIES I was talking about... It's said that these worthless trashfish are one of the main predators to our smolt in our SW WA river systems and lower columbia tribs... Perhaps you haven't fished the EF of the lewis in the summertime when the water is like a bathtub full of these worthless brown turds up to 3-4 pounds and full of steelhead and salmon fry, and also including bugs, periwinkles, and the minute plankton that our smolt need to survive.. But the game department doesn't care to do much about ridding our lower columbia tribs to these trashfish...

Another study WDFW did on the EF that just cracks me up is they put a "cone" in the lower river in which catches all downward moving smolt, fish, etc... Then they'd come every other day and check their little cone trap and (tag or horass) our poor little native fry/smolts in that 60 degree water to transport them back up river and check the success of their downriver cycles... Was that necessary, NO... But they went on and did it.. What they should be doing is running mesh nets through the holes and cleaning out the squawfish and rid the SW WA rivers of this predatory problem...
Keith

Well said Gooose, on both posts. I fish bait most of the time (when legal), I too very rarely hook smolts/trout while fishing with bait. I fish size 1's or larger, even in the summer, while drift fishing. A size 1 hook with a bait of eggs, shrimp, or prawn is usually "too much" for a smolt to handle, let alone swallow. The only time I jump down to a 2 or 4 is when I'm free drifting (boondoggin') out of the sled on rivers such as the NF Lewis or Cowlitz. Even then, rarely do I catch smolt.

This brings me to what Lead Thrower mentioned. Just because bait is banned doesn't mean you can't walk up to a river and catch the living sh!t out of smolt/trout. A person throwing small spinners, size 1 or 2, or whipping small flies can do MORE damagae than a person targeting steelhead with bait due to hook sizes. A hook restriction size makes more sense to keep EVERYONE in check. Say, no smaller than a size 1 (gap measurement, due to the varying size between hook brands)?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it the WDFW Commission that turned down statewide steelhead release? The same people that imposed the new rule on the EF Lewis? Maybe their "science" is right after all stlhd20. Maybe next year I'll just go ahead a take my season limits of natives on the all the OP rivers. After all, their "science" says the escapements can handle it. Whatdaya think? It'd be kinda sad if a guy like myself who has always released natives to start beleiving in "science" without much fact.

James

Here's a nice fish that is a bit of a chromer and was taken on eggs, but not off a redd...

Wow James, I think you hit the nail on the head with that last post... Well said, very well said...
Surely you didn't take this EF summer run nate off a redd James, and thank god we killed all them SQUAWFISH!!!

Keith

Everyone wants to save the wild fish, but no one will quit fishing. C&R kills fish, listen to the complaining that went on when they closed one of the rivers above Seattle to C&R. We want to ban this and ban that, as long as it doesn't affect the way "we" fish. I say until you put your fishing pole away, you have no right to try to impose any rules on anyone.

Fishhead5

Thank you Aunty M for what you've said, it's sure that you can see all sides..
But I really hope that the lewis does get it's bait rights back and it can become a personal opinion in what you'd like to do to help the fishery...
Keith

I have a tough time seeing how that quote was a flame in any way, I felt I was stating the obvious. Everyone has a right to their opinion however:

An Alumaweld salesman will tell you the best boat is an Alumaweld, a Vision hooks salesman will tell you Vision hooks are the best, a Lamiglas rep will tell you that Lamiglas rods are the best...a bait salesman will tell you that bait is the best lure. These opinions are not invalid, in fact that's what you'd want to hear out of successful company representative.

However, with me, this diminishes the weight those opinions carry when I start to examine these issues as a whole. That is exactly what the expression "grain of salt" means. I hear and respect your opinion but I am not likely to give it much weight. Not a flame, but I suppose I see how it could be construed as such. Definitely not my intention and I'm sorry you took it that way.

I have eschewed bait in favor of spinners and spoons almost exclusively in the summertime and, at least in the river I most frequently fish, I kill incidentally far fewer smolt. I have put my lurebox where my ethics are and I encourage others to do the same.

Stlhdh20,
You can put your lure box anywhere you want. Until you put your rod away and quit killing smolts, everyone can see where your ethics are.

Fishhead5

Hey Everyone....Peace?!? I encourage everyone to find their own ethics and practice them. Encourage others if you want towards your choices...but don't attack the choices of others in your efforts to persuade. Especially given the lack of conclusive science in this particular case regarding your choices or others. Also think about this...when it comes down to arguing over a few percentage points of difference in impact...well a dead fish is a dead fish...and hypocracy rules. Fish your lives...not someone elses. No flameage intended towards anyone here btw.

Fishhead5 -

Out of all the arguments presented here yours actually makes the most sense. Unfortunately it fails the hypocricy test too in a big way unless you have personally 'put your rod away'.

This post is meant to contribute to the ongoing conversation questioning the ethics behind fishing bait year round. As others have said the science on this subject appears to be slim to non-existent. All we are left with is our personal observations, frame of reference and conversations such as this to help us determine where our personal ethics lie. Looks like we've got a terrific cross section of opinions...

I don't think its hypocritical in the least to note that, when I fish bait in the summer I kill more smolt and then change fishing methods accordingly. In fact here is an analogy:

President Bush sent Americans to war knowing that a small number of Americans would die to protect a large number of Americans, probably a tougher decision than any of us have had to face today. Does this make him a hypocrite to say "I am protecting Americans" when Americans are getting killed as direct result of his actions? Of course not, at least not in my view. In fact doing nothing was the last thing Pres. Bush could afford to do.

I look at protecting Native fish in much the same way. Is it hypocritical to say "I will adopt personal measures to protect wild smolt", follow through by discontinuing to use bait in the summer and then accidentally hooking and killing a smolt?? Of course not, at least in my view. In fact doing nothing is the last thing I can afford to do.

Thanks for contributing to this thread everyone....

Firstly, I've got to agree wholeheartedly with stlhdr1. The squawfish, nets, and seals are such a problem that no bait ban in the world is going to do squat until the state gets off its A$$ and fixes the real problems. I do not support a bait ban..... on any river, and will continue to fish with bait whenever I want to until these other problems are addressed. It is not right that the sportsman should suffer time and again just because the state cant take care of bussiness, or is unwilling to take the necessary steps to ensure the survival of the native runs. Get the God Damned nets out of our rivers, start killin off these Squaw fish, and open up a hunting season on seals, then we'll talk about banning bait.

Amen, ZoZo!!!!!!!!!
Keith

Another discussion on bait bans?

This issue has been debated for more than 20 years and there is probably no issue that divides steelhead fishermen as much as a bait ban. Below I'll attempt to lay out some of the information that is known on this issue.

Numerous studies of the last several decades have consistently shown that the use of bait results in significantly higher mortalities that artifical lures. For this discussion scents should be considered to be bait as the fish behave (bite) to scent lures much the same as other baits. The use of bait in "trout" fishing typically found mortalities in the 30 to 50% range. The majority of mortalities in the various studies were caused by the fish being hooked in "critical areas" (gullet, gills, base of the tongue, eye, and brain). When a fish attempts to ingest the bait the probability of being hooked in a critical area increases dramatically - thus the high mortality with bait.

The size of our parr and smolts means that the past studies on trout should be considered in discussing this issue. An important factor to remember is not everyone on our rivers are targeting steelhead/salmon. For an example a hooking mortality study on the Stillaguamish looking at mortality of sea-run cutthroat using night crawlers found that for every legal (at that time 14" or larger) cutthroat caught there were 18 steelhead parr caught during the study. It was determined that the mortality of the parr was more than 35%. Another thing that was noted was that going to larger hooks (as typically used in steelhead fisheries) did reduce the number of fish hooked however the mortality of those caught remained high. Those caught on larger hooks often could not take the bait deeply yielding fewer hooked in the gullet and gills however this was counteracted by the "gaffing" of the fish with the large hook. During the "gaffing" the fish was often impaled through the eye, brain, gills, or heart which almost always resulted in a dead fish.

To examine what the potential hooking mortality maybe, lets look at an example. There are somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 steelhead fishermen in Washington. Lets assume that 35,000 of the them are hard core bait users and each of them catches 1 steelhead parr/smolt a month (more in the summer and less in the winter) for a total of 12 per year. Reasonable? Given the typcical mortality that means each fisherman killed 4 parr a year. Given that the over-winter survival of parr is around 50% that means that the equivalent of 2 dead smolts. With a 10% smolt to adult survival for wild steelhead that equates to 0.2 adult wild steelhead. 35,000 anglers times 0.2 adults/anglers equals equivalent to 7,000 wild steelhead. To put that in prespective that equals about the average number of wild steelhead killed by Washington sport anglers during the mid-1990s (punch card estimates). If you believe that past harvest of wild fish is excessively then is the parr hooking mortality?

The above is just the impacts on steelhead parr and doesn't consider the impacts on steelhead adults, sea-run cutthroat, "Dollies", and resident trout.

Adult steelhead hooking mortality studies have almost all been a by product of brood stock captures where the fish are capture by actively fishing the bait. This differs from how many anglers use bait. For example it has been found that the percentage of steelhead hooked in critical areas (likely to experience mortlatiy) was higher in a plunk fishery than a drift fishery. I'm sure that most of you would acknowledge that while using bait the number of fish hooked in critical areas is higher when the fish is given the chance to "eat" the bait (use of bait divers, drifting without weight, giving the fish slack line on the bite, etc)than while fishing on a tight line and setting the hook immediately on the bite.

Sometimes the argument is made that resident trout should not be a consideration in anadromous waters. Hasn't it occurred to anyone that the reason that resident trout are rarely seen on most waters is that bait has been used for decades and the resident fish are being actively selected against (30% mortalty per capture is pretty high). In fact in almost every anadromous stream that I'm aware of that is closed to fishing, where the use of bait is prohibited, or has little fishing pressure resident rainbow trout are found. Not only are there trout in these waters they often live to surprising ages (up 10 years) and large size (multiple pounds).

If bait bans are to be considered the biology of the young steelhead indicates that seasonal use of such bans will reduce most of the impacts. Once the water temperature drops below the mid-forties the fish seek out over-winter habitat (log jams, among the boulders, and other "hidey-holes"). The fish remain in those areas until the water temeprature rises or they become smolts. In this part of the world this means that the fish have limited availability to anglers from sometime in November into March.
Ergo - summer bans of bait.

Todd was correct in that kelts (spawn-outs) have higher hooking mortality than unspawned fish. Basically the kelts begin feeding shortly after spawning. One study found that kelts caught on bait were hooked in critcal areas about 30 to 35% of the time.

In our zeal in chasing steelhead we often forget that our rivers are the home to quite an array of sportfish: steelhead (hatchery and wild), various salmon, sea-run cutthroat, Dollies, resident rainbow, cutthroat, and whitefish. In some cases even warm-water species. Often one or more of these species are on the "Endangered Species List". There are valid fisheries other than those directed towards steelhead.

As things currently stand on most rivers it is for each of you to wrestle with this issue in accordance to you own fishing ethics.

Tight lines
Smalma

When discussing issues as divisive as a bait ban conflict is inevitable and unavoidable. In order to have an effective conversation on the issue both sides must be presented and the arguments of both sides dissected for flaws in logic.

Where above am I trying to impose to my fishing ethics on others AuntyM? By explaining my ethics and how I have I come to adopt them? By encouraging others to do the same? By pointing out the flaws in the 'no bait ban, period' argument?

Just because I take a position counter to yours and defend it well doesn't mean I am looking to cause conflict, it means I am constantly comparing my ethical stance vs. that of others. Having the flexibility to change or adapt my ethics when presented with new information or ideas should indicate to you that what I am after is your (the board's) general opinion. If you make a statement whose premise is faulty and I say "Your premise is faulty" this is not an attack on the person, I am questioning the premise.

Now...calling me a hypocrite for being concerned about smolt enough to change my approach but not discontinue fishing entirely is an attack. Using this faulty argument I could infer that fishhead5 does not care about Native fish because he believes that anyone who does believe so should discontinue fishing. I don't believe this to be true at all, just pointing out the flaw in the argument.

Am I looking for conflict? No. Am I looking to discuss issues which people are passionate about? Yes. Should I expect conflict as a result? Yes.

The question is how responsibly have I dealt with that conflict. Well, I haven't attacked anyone or called them names, I may have called their ethical practices in to question but the whole point of this thread is that I questioning all ethical practices that surround the use of bait, including my own.

Again it seems like some people can't make the distinction between a personal attack and someone questioning their position in an argument. Too bad because for me, I believe that once you have become intractable (will never change your opinion) you have stopped learning. I feel strongly that I need to listen to people who try to tear down my arguments, I learn something almost every time.

Smalma -

Sorry about continuing a discussion that has apparrently already been beaten to death...

Thanks for posting in spite of that....

Stlhdh20,
You pat yourself on the back for not using bait when there are smolts in the river. But you still catch a few, so you still kill wild fish. What difference does it make if they are 5 inches or 20lbs? I don't want to fish anything but eggs. I can fish floats, spinners and pink worms. But I love nothing better than to freedrift eggs! I hook very few smolts. I use either 2 #4's or 2 #2's with a cheater in the middle. To big of a bait to hook most smolts. Let me pose it to you a different way. If you are fishing a river that is C&R and you come across a boat that is pulling bait divers. Your first reaction is to jump all over them for fishing in such a manner, where there are only nates. But you by out there fishing have a chance of mortally hooking a fish also, not as great as the people pulling bait divers, but still a chance. Is it OK for you because you have lessend the chance?? This is where we differ in opinion. You are the same in my book. I fish in C&R rivers, I accept that I'm going to kill some on accident. So I have no right to tell others what to use and what not to use until I quit killing some myself.

Fishhead5

Someone want to complain about smolts dying then they should take a look at the saltwater. Go downrigging sometime with a flasher and a spoon off Seattle for silvers. You will especially with siwash hooks kill more smolts than silvers.
So should this form of fishing be banned?

Certain rivers at certain times apparently have a huge number of smolts present and they bite at hardware too and die incidentally. Well maybe we should close that river during that time period.

Should CNR fishing be allowed anywhere there are Federally listed species present?

Was I wrong in getting the lower portions of the Duckabush and Dosewallips closed to all fishing inorder to keep the "River Runs Through It" crowd off the rivers where they claimed to be legally fishing for cutts and summers while they were actually targetting summer chums and in odd numbered years depressed runs of pinks? They were having a blast unknowingly killing these poor salmon stocks in their cnr fishery. Like it or not guys..it wasn't bait, nets, or seals that were punishing the remnants of these runs...it was those who claimed the socalled "highest ground." I hated to do it but I'm proud of the results.

What it comes down to is be careful which "throne of righteousness" you choose to claim....it may not be what you think it to be.
Our choice to fish by any method carries with it a knowledge that we will cause the mortality of some portion of what we prize the most. I live with my self realization every day I fish or hunt. Anything else is hypocracy.

"What difference does it make if they are 5 inches or 20lbs?"

The difference is that when I use bait I hook more smolt which are much more likely to die as a result than the 20lbr...

"If you are fishing a river that is C&R and you come across a boat that is pulling bait divers. Your first reaction is to jump all over them for fishing in such a manner, where there are only nates."

Where did you ever get this idea? I would never chastise anyone for fishing within the rules. I have pulled bait divers this year in a river with predominantly native fish, not really by choice as I was fishing in someone elses boat. The taking of native fish was allowed at the time. I wasn't the captain at the time and didn't really want to make waves. I also wasn't aware of the difference in hooking mortality until very recently. At the time, if someone would have given me a hard time about pulling divers I probably would have gotten pretty defensive because I was within the rules.

"I fish in C&R rivers, I accept that I'm going to kill some on accident."

I have said many times that to C&R for native steelhead you know that you will probably kill the occasional fish.

The main difference I think between our opinions is our differing experiences on the river. Before I quit using bait in the summer I caught hundreds of salmon and steelhead smolt almost exclusively natives. I switched to using hardware and plugs and I now catch nearly zero smolt.

In both of our cases our experiences have dictated our ethics. I am not sure what your home river is, maybe there is a reason you aren't catching many smolt while using bait in the summer.

"throne of righteousness"

Where are you getting this stuff?