i`d have to agree with you, if i had a group of ignorant sportfisherman wanting to give me more fish and screw up sportfishing i`d gladly take them.

There is a difference between sport harvest and sportfishing...

Curious as to what your answer to the problem would be.

Make more fish?

Continue the rape of the river?

Just curious.

Please answer or STFU!

do you realize what the real problem is ??, tell me what you think the problem is.

Eyefish-
As Aunty and others have pointed out many times currently on the Columbia lower River spring Chinook fishery the combined sport and commercial fisheries are catching nearly all they fish they are allowed. There are obligations (Tribal and other up river fisheries) to insure that adequate numbers of fish (hatchery and wild) are passed upstream. In 2008 those upstream obligations were not met and just barely so in 2009

Sorry but if the commercial fishermen are to be given a "carrot" to convert to more selective methods there is only one place for those extra fish to come from and that is the lower river sport catch.

While that trade off may be worthwhile (and I can think of several legislative types that would think so) the cost will likely be fewer hatchery fish available to the lower river recreational fishery. Is a reduction in sport catch of hatchery fish (with the same wild fish impacts) worth the cost of converting the commercial fishery to a selective one?

That is for each of us to answer however I believe it is critical that folks understand the issue; otherwise some be faced with a nasty surprise.

Tight lines
Curt

FNP,

I'm also a CCA member, but I have a different take on this that is similar to Todd's and Boater's. Let me lay it out.

First, the LCR gillnet fleet does not fish mop up behind the recreational fishery. They have fished upstream of part of the recreational fleet only last year to avoid intercepting Willamette fish, which returned below escapement goal level. Generally the gillnet fleet fishes the same water or downstream of the recreational fleet. Any assumptions about relegating the gillnet fleet to upstream of the recreational fishery are just that, assumptions. Further, such assumptions are incorrect because of the substantial recreational fishery upstream of Bonneville.

Next, the ESA allowable take is just that, allowed, and it will be taken, so no additional wild chinook will reach the spawning grounds. So this is not a conservation conflict as no conservation will occur. That makes it an allocation conflict, in which case I wouldn't frame in as greed. I think of it as highest and best use of a limited public resource. That is, more social and economic benefit accrues to society from recreationally caught salmon than from commercially caught salmon. This doesn't make it greed; it makes the argument one of common sense.

For those who have been having trouble understanding this argument, here's a simple arithmetic model (there are other variables omitted to maintain simplicity that don't change the concept):

Assume a total above Bonneville spring chinook run size (what the fishery and ESA impacts are based on) of 200,000 chinook, of which 20% or 40,000 are wild and 160,000 are hatchery origin. The ESA allowable take is 15% or 6,000 wild chinook. Of those, 13% or 5,200 are allocated to the upstream treaty fishery which is preponderantly commercial in case anyone isn't noticing. And 2% or 800 are allocated to and split between the non-treaty commercial and sport fisheries.

Recently the split has been 60% recreational, or 480 wild chinook, and 40% or 320 wild chinook are allocated to the gillnet fleet. At 18% incidental mortality in the commercial fleet, they are allowed to catch up to 1,778 wild chinook before their 320 incidental mortalities are "used up" to harvest 8,890 hatchery chinook.

Now, if the commercial fleet adopts a selective fishing method with say only a 5% incidental mortality, they will be allowed to catch up to 6,400 wild chinook before their 320 incidental mortalities are "used up" to harvest 32,000 hatchery chinook.

At 32,000 hatchery chinook harvested, there will be 23,110 fewer hatchery chinook in the river being fished by recreational anglers. OK, out of 160,000 hatchery chinook in the run, that is only a reduction of about 14.5%.

Now let's look at the sport fishery. The incidental mortality estimate used is 10%. With a wild incidental mortality of 480 chinook, the recreational fleet is allowed to catch up to 4,800 wild chinook before the incidental mortalities are used up to harvest 24,000 hatchery chinook.

The question is whether the reduction of 23,110 fewer hatchery fish (due to selective commercial fishing) in the river adversely affect sport fishing? Any significant reduction in the number of fish present in the river on any given day reduces the number of fish caught in a sport fishery. Is a 14.5% reduction significant?

You can bet that the fishery management agencies will consider the impact to sport fishing as insignificant and more than worth it because it removes an additional 23,110 hatchery fish that "might" potentially spawn with wild fish on the spawning grounds, and simply because it increases the total harvest, which is always a positive thing if you're in harvest management.

My own analysis is that since the treaty tribal fishery is largely commercial, the state law requiring deference to commercial fishing is more than complied with because the tribes catch 86% of the chinook harvest as it is. The LCR gillnet fishery is an anachronism whose time should be past so that as many of the allowable harvest of chinook as possible are taken by the highest and best use fishery, which is recreational fishing.

(Just saw Curt's post. Those additional commercial chinook harvest can come only from the sport fishery. Note in my example, which uses some generally observable numbers, that the additional commercial harvest is just slightly larger than the entire LCR sport catch. How'dya' like them apples?)

Sg

SG.............I rest my case.

I am asking you.

I have a opinion, but I want yours first.

You complain alot, nothing more. So I would like your answer to the problem.

I believe you missed the point I was trying to make. There is a calculated "paper fish" impact inflicted by the gillnets. The rub is that it's at least an order of magnitude greater than stated when one looks at actual fish of the free-swimming variety.... or in this case dead fish of the non-swimming variety.

The actual gillnet impact is GROSSLY understated when they say they have consumed their 0.8% of the 2%. I'd wager they kill at the very least 10 times the stated paper impact. Those wild fish will never see the gravel, yet on paper, their seed is considered FDIC-insured, safe in the gravel.

The conservation benefit of eliminating gillnets cannot be denied.

You may not think it's much, but it is most emphatically there.

lots of problems down there, what one are you talking about ?

Sorry Doc but Salmo's got it correct, this plan has no conservation aspects what's so ever, it just shifting the bulk of the harvest to the commercials with exactly the same amount of ESA fishing dieing.
But the worst part is it takes the opportunity away from the sportfishers.

In rough orders of magnitude, just what percentage of CR hatchery spring chinook are realistically biters?

1 in 10?

1 in 100?

1 in 1000?

In my limited experience, I'd say that next to Willapa Bay kings, mainstem CR springers are the worst NON-BITING strain of chinook in the state. (Since we share the river with Oregon, they can take half the blame )

If I run over 100 springers with my gear, I'd be pushing my luck to get even ONE of the dirty bass turds to bite. Yes, we ARE that bad!

The point i'm making here is that for every 100 hatchery fish the nets remove, you're losing one stinking keepable biter TOPS!

salmo g., you probly should break out the crayola`s to explain this.

No crayolas needed on this end boater, but I'd gladly buy you a 128-color JUMBO pak.

You still think the killnets only take 0.8%?

Dementia is a bitch ain't it?

your living proof that you can be a doctor and not have any common sense.

The fleet is nowhere near that efficient (Com/sport combined).

The only reason it happens is because the preseason forecasts are so far off. Oh the perils of designing a season based strictly on paper fish!

boater
you sure are good at bypassing the insults and getting back to your point
kudo's at you for that
it makes the talking points for both sides much clearer for a ignorant outsider like me looking in

How about Doc, Salmo, and Smalma are all right, within their perspective.

The fishery is managed to a number of dead wild springers, and they will all be dead. Selective fishing will be able to kill more hatchery fish for the same impact in gillnets. And those fish will come from either from the surplus at the hatchery or the sporties.

At the same time, gillnets kill a lot of fish that are not recorded, or maybe even known. Net drop out, delayed mortality, seal food, and so on. From a management perspective, these fish never show up in data sets. Selective gear will probably kill fewer wild fish, but this will not be quantified by managers, so it won't be accounted for. But, I think it will be there.

BINGO!

Those three perspetives round out the conservation and allocative issues perfectly.

Thanks Salmo and Smalma.

And thx carcassman for tying it all together.

As for boater... it ain't worth the effort of typing it.

spilling water is lining up with a healthy ocean


Funny how this statement has been completely forgotten, and it has degraded into who gets to kill the most and first arguement.