Amen, brother... Amen!

So here's the bottom line folks, nuts and bolts.

Removing the gillnets

= more wild ESA springers hit the gravel

= less hatchery springers hit the gravel

= more ESA wild steelhead hit the gravel

= more giant 3-salt early-timed summers make it in the Lewis/Cowlitz/Kalama for stlhdr1 to harass

= maximally extracting hatchery fish paid for by Joe Q Public.

The only "downside" anyone has been able to articulate is that the commies get more to fill their totes.

Like I said before... BFD!

More of what?

I think some of you really have an inflated impression of your fishing abilities. You MIGHT get 1% of those turds to bite. Now apply your bite to land ratio. If all the planets line up right, over a season's fishing, your gonna land half of 'em.

For every 100 hatchery fish the commies remove, it'll cost the sporties one bite and perhaps a half a fish in the box.

Not exactly much of an opportunity loss if you ask me.

If it's really all about the meat, just hang up yer f'n rod and go to Safeway. You'll be much happier and spend a hell of a lot less money.

What the hell ever happened to SPORT fishing?

JFC! Maybe boater can decide... is that the Laphroaig talkin' again, or is it just common sense?

The Former Director WDFW expressed he wanted to to step down when conditions were less than favorable.

Beyond the dams and the nets in the river we must recognize ocean commercial take.

Staff at WDFW gets all worked up over projected fishes. They favor the commercial take, thus fall into dreams of loyalty to backwards thinking.

Oh' darn some veterans want to fish too.

Somebody check my brain...

Boater, did you get tangled in your gillnet and have the air supply get cut off to your dome or what? Doc is right on when he states springers are poor biters. I have these fish dialed In, spank some of the best guides out there day after day, caught tons of limits, but there are piles of fish on the graph but only a few will grab it. And if bonneville opens the gates it shuts them off big time it happened last spring. Oh and handling the ENDANGERED SPECIES Salmon and W. Steelhead in nets that wrap them all up over and over again kills the $hit out of them. I catch winter steelhead on a lower columbia trib that return particularly late for winter steel and they all have net marks and seal bites combined. Stressed and tired from being tangled up, then beat up by multiple gillnetters makes them scooby snacks for seals. And these were the lucky steelies that didn't die and sink out of the nets. These gillnetters handle these fish like they are in there way, kick the $hit out of em right back into the river. Oh, they have a recovery tank you say? What happens when no one is watching how they operate the recovery tank? What if the tank isn't functioning properly or not functioning at all? What happens when the netters are catching a big pile of fish and filling their totes, do they take time to recover all the wilds properly or reset their tangle net and start catching as fast as they can? How about the SALMON FOR ALL PRESIDENT who was busted killing Wilds and selling them, had his recovery tank not working while netting, and selling fish that were not recorded. People who operate tangle net boats kill the piss out of the fish runs and lay waste to the entire river yet a minority on this site yells out loud that we need to keep these nets around till we can total rid the columbia of industrial commercial fishing. How many more years will the wild fish runs hold on for dear life before they blink out of existence? While greedy donkeys fight to keep these nets around In the name of better sport catches, wild salmon fade into oblivion. These wilds are the gems. When they are gone inbred hatchery fish will wither away and we will have NO salmon.

it is nice to see so many different theories on this subject, it helps a layman like me start to form an opinion.

Like I said I am a layman at this subject but I dont think the fact the LCR Springers are poor biters should be a factor in this argument. Almost every run of salmon on the Sky are poor biters, does that mean we set policy that destines them for doom?

Can I get one more internet wise guy to insult my intelligence?
Its not that I don't get the arguement, its that I dissagree on whats better for sportsfishermen let alone everyone else. There are many reasons why getting gillnets out of the river will improve fishing. Even if there were way less hatchery fish. Sportfishermen for gillnets are shooting themselves and the rest of us in the foot.

Good thing hogs haven't made it to the endangered list yet...Oldie but always gets a chuckle out of me.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4RNb3tt0LM

Not only is it not true that more wild springers will hit the gravel, wait until the really nasty surprise in this plan comes to light...the "highest and best use" you are talking about...

The commercials by coming much more efficient and selective than us will likely get a lot more than the .8% impact they are getting now...there will be no way to argue at all that the split shouldn't at least be 50/50...that, too, will remove more fish from the sportfishing fleet's opportunity.

Jake, I'll say this one more time: NO sportfishermen are advocating for more gillnets...but some of us are also not advocating for a greater commercial catch that comes with no concommitant increase in natural spawners, and comes at the expense of sportfishing opportunities.

Some of us are also advocating for something that actually will work...get rid of the in-river non-tribal commercial fisheries altogether, as they provide no useful service that isn't already being provided elsewhere, other than to take fish, days, and lots of dollars out of the sportfishing community.

Besides making the most sense economically, that would also actually put more ESA fish on the spawning grounds AND make sportfishing better, at the same time.

Fish on...

Todd

You are being totally disingenuous when you say when you say no additional wild fish hit the gravel Ripley.

How 'bout a little intellectual honesty here.

I already laid out the hidden impacts of gillnets that currently go FAR beyond 0.8%. Out of sight, out of mind. Do you not recognize these phantom impacts that have gone completely unaccounted ever since the springer gillnet fishery was resurrected? The white gillnet impact is probably closer to 8% than it is to 0.8%.... quadruple the entire non-treaty share of impacts.

Even if you failed to acknowledge that very obvious fact, I still can't understand how you would compromise the well being of your precious wild steelhead with your rabid anti-CCA stance. And the best rationale you can come up with for doing so is a meat market harvest mentality of "more for us less for them"? For hatchery turds?

You are WAY smarter than that dude. WAY.

Francis, you are smarter than that, too...this isn't an anti-CCA stance, since in spite of their support of it, they have nothing whatsoever to do with it...this is between the WDFW and the gillnet fleet.

"Phantom" numbers are just that...phantoms. Think there won't be unmeasured mortalities due to release injury, predator snatching, or whatever out of a purse seine?

If you're really interested in the "highest and best use", then that highest and best use is by far in favor of the sport fleet...long seasons and good bag limits on the spring Chinook means millions and millions of dollars to the local economy, virtually no impact on wild steelhead, plenty of fish to satisfy the tribal fishery above Bonneville, and a meaningful season for our E.Wa. and Idaho fishermen, who happen to live near a lot of the hatcheries that are producing fish for these LCR fisheries, and they don't get to fish for very often, or very much.

If you want to have a real discussion of this, at least let's talk about the issues, rather than playing salmon bake's game of ignoring the message and attacking the messenger. I'd be getting after the Vatican if they were pushing this, too.

Fish on...

Todd

Francis,

We might agree that the gillnet impact is greater than estimated on paper, but any alternative estimate is speculative. I know enough about commercial gillnetting to understand that the effects are greater than officially reported. But unreported information is part of every fish managmenet dataset baseline and accounted for therein. Therefore, asserting that significantly more wild chinook will reach spawning areas is speculative, particularly at the order of magnitude level. Consequently it is speculation that says this is a conservation argument. If that were objectively, rather than emotionally, clear, this part of the discussion would be so much easier.

A minor aside, and I'm not a springer angler of much experience, but it seems to me that the bite is more a factor of spring water temperature than whether the chinook is of hatchery or wild origin.

Sg

What are you talking about??? Just because you struggle to catch a CR Springer doesn't mean others haven't had their 20+ fish days on them.... They're actually excellent biters and simple fish to catch through out the entire river. That includes trolling herring, fishing kwikies or bouncing eggs around bonneville..... Yes early in the season March and April when fewer fish are present and water temps are low there are challenging days but when the peak of the run hits the river and water temps start rising I beg to differ.......

Step outside the box and fish something other than a herring out of a package... You have to get a little creative with the herring "and other baitfish" but no doubt the CR has excellent biters, and I've witnessed and had spectacular bites as a plunker off the shore with spin-glows....

I'm more into the 1 in 10 are biters during a herring troll and 1 in 4 are biters in areas with less pressure or during an egg bite.....

Even with your suggested numbers if we had 200,000 hatchery springers return to the CR and 1 in 100 bit that would be 2000 fish that would be caught by the entire sports fleet....

Let's use some round numbers for the sake of arguement.... Let's say there were 160,000 hatchery springers crossing Bonny and we get to kill 20,000 as sporties. That would be 1 in 8 that were biters that were KILLED and not lost or missed or etc.... So you factor in the number of fish lost, turned loose or missed bites and you're closer to 1 in 5 as "BITERS"....

Sounds like a pretty good biting strain of fish to me........

Keith

Todd,

I'd like to propose a truce. I see no point to continue the back and forth about selective harvest. The results could influence personal relationships, because there are many engaged and invested in this process. Tough love, isnt the answer. You can say you told us so, after the results are in. Plus, we already have a bill in the hopper.

A lot of sportsmen would like to elminate non tribal commercial harvest from the columbia. We dont know what will follow up, in the way of harvest reform in PS or off the coast. One such example might be to transfer all offshore harvest to the mouth of the rivers. Those types of changes could potentially make sense if combined with selective harvest. Regardless of how farfetched the example, this debate only serves to divide sportsmen and demonize the supporting organization. It also happened last year in Oregon and it wasnt productive. I suspect the prospect of passing a jobs killer bill in Washington is next to nil. Lets not forget, there are many more jobs involved, than the man pulling in the net. However, people are welcome to submit that legislation. If SFS comes to Washington, we have another player to fight with. SFS could be lobbied for, again in Oregon. We dont know what legislation will submitted, including amendments to 2266.

The recent selective harvest tests were conducted in daylight. Thats an important change, since we probably wont ban commercial fishing anytime soon. People who are concerned about less hatchery fish, wont have that long, since another hatchery is going to be built by the tribes for the columbia. Depending on your perspective, a half a loaf is better than nothing. If selective harvest isnt enough, then we go back to the legislature with more data and another plan. Or, each side could pound the table harder, divide sportsmen even more and start from ground zero next year. Failure to pass harvest reform in 2010 is unacceptable.

I disagree it sounds like you are in favor of impacting wild fish as fast as possible, to get the the commercials off the water to save hatchery fish. If there are any selective means already in place, you would be in favor of replacing them with gillnets, which would mean more gillnets.



Totally different issue.
Why not get rid of the dams improve the habitat and cut the tribal fishery while were at it. Meanwhile, back in the real world, some will be in favor of what we can do NOW to change things.

Didn't you get out and fish with Kevin Lund last year up below Bonneville? If I remember correctly you witnessed an average bite for that time of year as it was still a bit early. Shortly after that we were having 15-25 fish days up there limiting the boat every trip. CR Spring Chinook and Summer Kings are top notch table fare and I sure as [censored] won't be going out and buying mine nor will I be hanging up my gear.... At $15 a pound on the low side times the 12-15 spring and summer kings I put away a year that would be roughly $2200 in fish that I would have to go and buy..... PUFF PUFF PASS.

The CR Springers are easy to catch and as a sportsman group we catch some where around 1 in 8 hatchery fish that return if not a little more than that.... You need to learn to be a little more creative than just pulling a herring out of a pack and trolling it for hours, these aren't the easy saltwater fish you're used to fishing on... I'd suggest starting with brining some herring with the goodies and if you choose to fish the bonneville egg fishery heating the eggs up a bit.... Springers are notorious for staging in the tidewater areas of the Columbia hence the awesome bites we've witnessed around the I5 and I205 bridge over the last few years.

On another note, the lower columbia tribs have met their escapement with wild winter steelhead for the most part over the last 5 years. Myself and close friends have landed dozens of 20+ pound steelhead over the years... We get our early share of 3-salt summer runs whether you beleive it or not but as rivers like the Cowlitz make hatchery cuts you will see less of them.... If you're worried about these Lower Columbia fish then lobby with CCA to push the nets upriver in zones 4-5 like they have been doing as of recent...

I don't suspect the sportfisherman would notice another 2-4000 springers taken from the river by the netters but an additional 20-30,000, that would hurt......

In the perfect world there would be no Gillnets of any sort, I agree... But to push them to be more selective is going to take from all of our tables and I don't know about you but I enjoy eating the CR Spring Chinook Turds you're speaking of and I don't think anyone on this planet would argue that.......

Keith

if your talking about spring hatchery chinook on the columbia i agree that getting the gillnets out will improve sportfishing, make for longer seasons and kill a few less non-target fish, "but", getting gillnets out and replacing them with a selective commercial method that lets say has the same release mortality rate as sports will hurt sportfishing, the game departments will give the commercials more hatchery fish and they will come from sport fisherman, there is no other place for them to come from and that will shorten our season.

wow

after readng this, it looks like a simple solution is not so simple.

Most of the focus is on springers, but the gillnetters take valuable fish like sturgen. Will they still be able to use gillnets for sturgeon???

That SfA President was cited for not having an operational recovery box -- not selling wild fish. The name is "Wells"

Those other points are true.

And those are exactly the very same people that you're rewarding with an increased commercial fishery.

Are they suddenly going to "see the light' and change their outlaw ways?

Absolutely no one is saying that. Period.