How about we all get together and devote a creek or two in the lower columbia to designate hatcheries to. They will be designed to raise Spring Chinook. There will be no sportsmen contact with these creeks even in the estuary.

Then all the springers the creeks raise can be netted or if need be the netters can wait until the fish come to the hatchery which most all hatchery fish do in a hurry and they can harvest fresh chrome spring chinook all they want..... They can keep the nets out of the main columbia and call it a selective fishery. They can selectively pick the fish out of the hatchery bins and selectively pick the age, size, sex, etc... Plus they can leave surplus for spawning for the upcoming years...

Hows that for an idea??
Keith

Sounds good!

Its time a solution like this is forced!

Sounds fine by me, but let the netters finance the operation of these hatcheries themselves. Not on my dime, thank you! They will quickly see how much return they get for their investment. When they realize how small it actually turns out to be, they'll have a much better idea on how best to use the resource.... or at least how NOT to use it.

I am all for that!

Still you would run into opponets from fellow sportsfishermen.

what about the native fish in those streams.

Maybe the one thing nobody could argue is if the commercial purpose only hatcheries were on the waterfront and fed by wells. That way they would not affect native fish in any creeks or rivers.

How about this for netters:

If thats the case they could just get fish out of the hatcherys that already exist. When the fish get to the terminal, they could give the tribes as many as they are allowed, then give some to the commercials... no nets needed. That would be way to simple however. What fun would it be if they knew exactly how many hatchery fish they got, and did not kill wild ones as well.. Seems like the best answer to me all around but it is way to logical to ever work.

You outa foil, Grandpa?

the tulalip bubble is kinda like that, you realy dont even need a stream, just a pen....
the tulalip tribe "sometimes" appears to have a plan....DJ

Why not just cut a deal with the Gill netters? They can trade in X amounts of gill net licenses for X amounts of net pens to rear the chinook/coho in the Columbia River!

They get there fish, we get our fish! We can cut back on our hatcheries because they will get their share of the pie in their net pens. Zero competition with wild and endanger species. River cleans most of pollutants and pens could be altered in locations as needed.

Now what's wrong with this basic idea?

Cowlitzfisherman

Cowlitzfisherman:

Sounds like a superb business proposition!

Now, how do we go about approaching the netters with it? We would have to show them (on paper) how they would increase their income and also enhance their fishery. Someones going to have to run some real numbers on this.

Would have to consider start-up costs for an operation like that...who's gonna fund it?

Being a devil's advocate, were I a "netter" I might say:

"I have my license and fish to catch right now...you want me to change. Ok. Why? What benefit am I going to see?"

If we can show them an increased bottom line with less effort and cost then we've got a winner. Otherwise it'll be a tough sell.

Mike

If you eliminate the general commercial fishery, how do you keep congress from defunding the columbia river hatcheries? The main motivation for creating them in the first place was to provide mitigation for the dams, in support of the commercial fisheries. Congress is going to have some tough choices in the coming years, due to the deficits. If the fish are just there for recreational purposes, there is going to be alot of pressure to eliminate the expenditure. Don't waste time hollering at me about the benefit of a sport caught fish, I know the arguments.

The point is, since the fish we are trying to catch are hatchery fish, we should remember that in at least one sense, the commercials are, or should be, our allies.

>>If you eliminate the general commercial fishery, how do you keep congress from defunding the columbia river hatcheries? The main motivation for creating them in the first place was to provide mitigation for the dams, in support of the commercial fisheries.<<

Would it seem unreasonable to have Congress simply re-channel those funds into the net-pens?

Again, selling both Congress and the netters on the mutual benefits of the concept would be the key, IMO.

Mike

Mike

Net pens are fairly cheap to purchase! I have purchase several over the years and the more you buy, the cheaper they are.

Gill netters are not dumb, even though we may think they are. All they will have to do is to figure out the over head that they now have. Like boat maintenance, Insurance, mooring, license fees, etc, etc. Then they must consider the fact that the amount of harvestable fish are getting lower and lower each year. The times are getting shorter and shorter, and the writing is on the wall!

The benefits that they will see will be; they get to continue to fish and harvest fish without being interrupted because some wild specie has a problem. They get to continue a livelihood in the "fishing" business. They get to control the size of fish that the markets prefer, they can become a plus to the fishing industry instead of the negative ones that they are now.

Setting them up with net pens and all the goodies that go with it, would be far cheaper then the proposed "by backs" plans would be. Just think of this way, how would you like to make tens of thousands of dollars each year without having to sit all night long on the water "hoping" that you will catch your quota, when you can sit at home and know that your "quota" of fish is already sitting in your net pens. They can control the fish markets, by the amounts of fish that they grow instead of the markets paying them pennies for each pound. If you don't like the price, you hold them a little longer, or you cut back on prodution just like the oil companies do!

I could sit here all day and think of really good reasons why I would rather grow fish in net pens then try to catch them in gill nets.

Silver

That answer is not as complicated as you may think! You're forgetting that the mitigation for the fish lost that where due to the dams must still be met by the people who built them. The only thing that would change is where those fish will be harvested at. The fish managers intentionally allow X amount of fish back to be harvested in the Columbia River. Harvest has never been the issue, it's always been how do the fish managers divide it up so that the gill netters in the Columbia their share.

Fish will still be harvested in multiple other fisheries. Escapement will be higher, and the need to keep more hatcheries going will most like decline. That is going to happen no matter what, so this way the gill netters win, the sport fishers win, and the fish win!

The Commercials boy will remain our allies, they get their share of the pie in the other fisheries and the Columbia boys will get their share, but it will come form the net pens instead of the gill nets.


Congress would love to see a way that this issue could be resloved, and at the same time address the needs of Endangered Specie Act requirements!

Cowlitzfisherman

Nice thought but it won't work. The netters give the same arguments the tribal netters do (and to a large degree, this is supported by the govt.).......it's a way of life. They enjoy the feeling of providing a product for themselves/the public on their own terms, with a method they prefer.

We know it's a dated, out-of-touch way of thinking because it often is contradictory to the issues we face today. For example, another version of your creek idea is to let the netters collect from fishways at the dams selectively. This could technically be required now and would solve many biological issues.........but it's no fun to do it that way. It's the old "by god, no one's telling me how to fish! My pappy fished this way and I am too!"...........and as long as the netters stay within the agreement between themselves and the state(seldom good for the fish) they're going to continue fishing in the manner that best suits them..........not the fish.

The trick is to change the netter's train of thought and I frankly don't see this happening until the state gets some "nads" and forces change; something they are currently unwilling to do.

"Preliminary research findings show that coho salmon released from lower Columbia River net pens are showing strong overall survival rates. The BPA-funded ongoing study finds that the three percent survival rate for these coho is higher than the traditional hatchery runs. The total survival rate for all Columbia River coho salmon in 1996 was less than one percent, including all traditional hatchery and net pen production. The returning fish were reared and released just 18 months ago from four net pen sites near the mouth of the Columbia. These sites are Youngs Bay, Tongue Point and Blind Slough in Oregon and Deep River in Washington. Returning net pen coho salmon from BPA-funded programs represented 42 percent of the 1996 commercial harvest from the lower Columbia River. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Clatsop Economic Development Council manage the lower Columbia River net pen program in Oregon and Washington. ODFW and WDFW are conducting feasibility studies on proposed new net pen sites in both states."

Cowlitzfisherman