I agree that purse seines will have a significantly lower morality at the time of release than gillnets, but purse seines are very hard on salmon in salt water, and in what are estuaries like the LCR. Purse seine webbing is thicker and knotted, and causes significant descaling of salmon. Subsequent fungal infection would be the norm, not the exception.

For example, there is a reason why all the successful salmon population studies on the Skagit River capture fish by beach seining at Lyman or Hamilton. The fish's scales become "water hardened" after they move 26 miles upriver, above tidewater, and develop a thicker slime layer. Those same salmon captured by any method in the Bay or in the river's tidewater experience a very high mortality rate.

Sg

Sounds like the beach seiners are doing pretty good in the LCR with their testing....

Is there any up to date information regarding results of their testing for 2010?

Keith

Pat Frazier would be the one for updates, don't think any catch is being sorted at this point just all examined and transported to holding pens for long term mortality studies..

I think knotless is availible for the bunt web, sorting might be a problem on some of the bigger sets..


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mNtjS1XFms

If they get any AK style sets on the LCR, there won't be any survival, sorted or not.

True, there are knotless webbing materials available; wonder if that's what's being used.

Sg

Not sure but you would think they would require it and maybe a couple dozen recovery boxes to boot.

Appears that Frazier prefers to avoid stating the obvious. Must be looking to rise another rung up the bureaucratic ladder.

The only ones getting screwed harder than the LCR spring Chinook sportfishers are the upper river and Idaho sportfishers...they get screwed enough as it is, but this will really, REALLY, screw their fisheries.

Fish on...

Todd

i think that alot of people don't realize that sportfishing will suck if the commercials take alot of the same fish we are fishing for out of the system, willipa for example, would you rather fish over a large aggregate of fish and have the nets go in on the 16th of september like they did last year or would you rather have the commercials fishing selectively right beside you and slowing sportfishing to a crawl ?, this could happin in willipa and grays harbor and the columbia and we are going to have the biggest group of morons ever assembled scratching there heads like the dipshits they are wondering why fishing sucks.

Yeah but they're saving more wild fish right??

Sometimes I wonder how people get through life without much common sense......

Keith

i hope this works, this will get the commercials alot more fish and that will greatly help sportfishing, i`m on board 100 percent, in fact i would feel honored to fish next to a purse seine boat

http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/commercial/selective/current.html

That looks like a likely place for fish wheels.

Boater/Salmo g. -

I think many of us are unsure what the impacts on the increase harvest of hatchery fish by a selective commercial fishery on the lower Columbia would have on those up river fisheries. We will only know for sure after the policy folks make the decisions on how to allot the various impacts to the various fisheries.

For example those up river fisheries could well remain unchanged if the decision were to contine the same upper/lower river sharing of impacts/allocations that we currently have. All that requires is for any increase in lower river fishing impacts/allocation by a given fishery be balanced a reduction of in other lower river fisheries.

I think that if the State is indeed unsure how such a shift in the lower river paradigm will play out it would be cause for pause for at least some folks.

Heck on the lower river one could potentially spin the whole thing as a huge economic win. With a commercial selective fishery the commercial fleet will be able to sell more hatchery fish - an econmic plus. With a larger commercial take the recreational fishery behind it will be fishing on fewer fish. This of course would result in a lower catch/effort which translates into it taking more days effort to catch a given number of fish. Since the economic value in a recreational fishery is generated by number of man-days that fishery produces each of those recreational caught fish will be more valuable.

The classsic bureaucratic win-win result - now excuse me while I gag on my morning coffee.

Tight lines
Curt

Boater,

You probably don't realize how scary this stuff is to a gill netter.

At least they can't say you gave them fair warning.

if i was a gillnetter i`d be all for this, more fish = more money plus funding to change gear.

you mean low-hole.

I'm already hearing the whole thing is just about ready to go into the crapper for the reasons that have been covered here.

Lucky Louie,

Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see any suitable fish wheel locations. All the former Columbia River fish wheel sites are now under reservoirs. Fish wheels are extremely site sensitive.

Smalma,

A bureaucratic winner for sure! While opportunity is valuable, I recall that even Boldt wrote that opportunity to fish without the likelihood of catching isn't much of an opportunity. And while it's fun to fish the LCR for 3 or 4 days in the spring and again in Aug., I don't value it enough personally to spend a week's vacation down there to catch the few fish I bring home. I think I previously mentioned that the salmon I catch must cost me a few hundred dollars a pound; I think I contribute enough already to the recreational angling economy. If it came down to that kind of sport fishing on the LCR, I think I would just do my salmon fishing in AK instead, and drag an ice chest up and back.

It's interesting that in all this hub-ub about alternative gear and harvesting more hatchery salmon, we don't see anything about the various area allocations, and that's a very big deal. Imagine for a moment how Idaho feels about WA testing selective commercial gear intended to allow fewer Idaho hatchery fish return to Idaho, for example.

Sg

Your bathroom has an echo?