Just read this a minute ago, wish I had not already made other plans.

NEWS RELEASE
WASHINGTON DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE
600 Capitol Way North, Olympia, WA 98501-1091

April 29, 2003
Contact: Tim Flint, (360) 902-2728
or Cindy LeFleur, (360) 906-6708


Columbia River spring chinook sport fishing
trimmed from Bonneville to McNary dams


OLYMPIA-Sport fishing for Columbia River hatchery spring chinook salmon will be reduced to four days a week between Bonneville and McNary dams effective Sunday, (May 4), state fish managers have announced.

Fishing will be open Wednesdays through Saturdays only from the Tower Island power lines in Bonneville Pool upstream to McNary Dam. That section of river is scheduled to close for the season May 16, although fishing could end earlier if the allowable impact on protected upriver fish is reached before then.

Meanwhile in the lower river, fishing for adipose fin-clipped salmon will continue-for the time being-on the same Wednesday-through-Saturday schedule from the Interstate 5 bridge to Buoy 10.

Washington and Oregon fish managers will meet again Monday (May 5) to reassess the size of the spring chinook run destined for areas above Bonneville Dam-currently projected to be 193,000 fish-and modify the fishery if necessary.

So far this season, spring chinook anglers have landed 22,800 fish and retained 14,600 hatchery-reared fish below Bonneville Dam. Above the dam, fishers have landed 1,140 fish and kept 640 hatchery fish.

Under a management agreement between the federal government, states and tribes, the non-tribal spring chinook fishery is managed to limit the impact on protected upriver wild fish to not more than 2 percent of the wild upriver run. The impact reflects wild fish mortality that results from being inadvertently caught and released.

Good luck to those of you going.

NEN

WhooHoo!

Under a management agreement between the federal government, states and tribes, the non-tribal spring chinook fishery is managed to limit the impact on protected upriver wild fish to not more than 2 percent of the wild upriver run. The impact reflects wild fish mortality that results from being inadvertently caught and released.

so that means that the more wild fish you brag about releaseing the higher the supposed mortality rate and the less hatchery fish we can keep " wild fish . what wild fish I have never even hooked a wild fish." are you all catching this loop pole or not. Tom

Exactly there Starcraft. Same answer goes for those innocent -"Did you hook any birds" questions too. Think about it. It's a way to run up the collateral damage. That's it.

Guys, WDFW is not as dumb as you think. They already know the mark/unmark ratio, and they figure out how many unmarked fish were caught and released by how many marked fish are sampled (ie, actually looked at by a sampler) in the fishery. Whether you answer truthfully or not has no bearing on the issue, except to corroborate that most fishermen are liers. They also do some other things, like when they catch people keeping unmarked fish they factor that into the dead wild fish equation, ie: If enforcement catches one poacher out of 50 checked that means 2% keep wild fish all the time. After all, poachers rarely brag to the fish checker about all the wild fish they killed either. So I know that you think it is clever to deceive the samplers and cheat the system, but it doesn't work that way, sorry About the only way to cheat the system is to release all the marked fish too and show them that you caught nothing back at the dock.

Oh yeah, finally believed them this time and made other plans also, [Bleeeeep!]

The area i fished last most people where having a hard time getting marked fish. you had to release 3 wild fish. one poor guy was trolling and had released 6 wild fish and no hatchery fish to take home. I would have been happy with that but I would not have told you about it, ok maybe you but no one else.