Yesterday I and a few friends fished the big C above the bridge. The rules require the release of wild coho. We did as required and released three or four wild coho. We did our very best to leave them in the water and handle them as gently as possible. Even so I'm sure we killed at least one of those fish that was hooked in the gills and another that I believe a seal ate after we released it. I have talked to other guys who said they had released as many as five wild fish in one day. No doubt a decent proportion of those die. In my experience choc just entering the river are very fragile fish. I am certain the mortality is high. Wouldn't it make more sense to simply require that we keep the first two landed regardless of hatchery or wild origin? What do you think?

I understand that this would limit the fishing experience many days, but I think it would make more sense the wasting a wild fish that will likely die anyway.

Dave,

Wild LCR coho are ESA listed. The hatchery coho are not. The operable hypothesis is that releasing wild coho results in higher survival overall than keeping the first two coho caught. Whether it works out depends on the ratio of wild to hatchery coho in the population being fished. Eyefish did the math for this year's coho return to Gray's Harbor, and based on the wild to hatchery ratio of the respective runs, it makes more sense to have anglers retain the first two coho caught, which is the regulation adopted by WDFW. In Gray's Harbor, the wild run is expected to be pretty good. In the LCR, the wild run is invariably small in contrast to the hatchery run. One of the difficulties is that a lot of CR hatchery coho continue to be unmarked, last I heard, so it looks like wild coho are over-represented in the total coho population.

One thing we can be sure of is that putting a coho in the fish box will always have a lower survival rate than releasing them.

Sg

Anywhere there is a good amount of wild coho around, you will likely kill less by bonking two than by releasing five.

Fish on...

Todd

P.S. This only applies in the salt and in the lower reaches of rivers where the coho are ocean fresh...once they harden up a bit they release just as well as any other fresh water hardened salmonid.

you should be able to come up with something better than that...

not sure if anyone else will appreciate it but I'll see what I can do....

Please.... NO!!!!! Not again.

Keep the first two and try to focus the herd where the mark rate is highest..

+100.

The math goes like this....

If the release mortality rate equals the encounter rate (the statistical likelihood of catching a wild fish) then it's a wash. The same number of wild fish will die regardless of obligatory wild C&R vs obligatory wild retention.

Anytime the encounter rate exceeds the mortality rate, fewer wild fish die by keeping the first two. Fewer of them will die.

Only when the encounter rate falls below the mortailty rate can a legitimate case be made for mandating non-retention of wild fish.

Steelhead aren't ocean coho.

Dave -
If one is interested in have as long as seasons as possible or removing (keeping) as many hatchrey fish as possible wild release (even ocean coho) always makes sense. Remember the evaluation will always be based on the "fleet's" impacts rather than individuals.

Maybe an hypothical example might help. Let's assume that the coho population is 1/2 wild and 1/2 wild and the fleet is averaging a 1/4 of a hatchery coho/angler landed (wild coho released). That would mean that if a 1,000 anglers were fishing they would have landed 250 hatchery coho while releasing 250 wild coho. If the anglers were allowed to keep wild coho they would have also killed 250 wild coho (we'll ignore the complication of limits to keep things simple).

In releaseing those 250 wild coho they would kill 50 if the release mortality was 20%. Even if that mortality were 80% they would kill 200 fish (still less than 250).

As we all know for the never ending CCA/selective fishing debates in this day of ESA listed fish our fishing seasons are limited by impacts on those listed fish. Sticking with the above example let's say that the fishery will be limited by a total wild impact (dead fish) of 2,500. Without selective fishing that would mean those 1000 anglers at 250 wild coho per day that allowable impacts would be reached in 10 days of fishing. However if that mortality were say 50% then that fleet in our example would be killing 125/day and they would be allowed to fish 20 days until they reached the allowable impacts limit of 2,500.

So the question to you would be does it make sense to release those wild coho to have seasons that were substantially longer?

Tight lines
Curt

Actually I have to retract that... got my encounter rate off kilter. Here's the real skinny

Anytime the mortality is less than the mark rate, a paper benefit can be shown by going mark selective... less wild fish would die than if you kill the first two. If the mortality is greater than the mark rate, less wild fish would die if you simply kill the first two fish encountered.

That truly is the crux of selective fishing...... extracting the maximum amount of hatchery fish over the greatest duration of time given the constraints of wild impact.

BUT.....

Where wild fish are present in harvestable numbers, and there are other depressed/threatened/imperiled stocks mixed into the same fishery, susceptible to the same gear type, it makes more sense to bonk the harvestable wilds as quickly as possible, reducing time on the water for the fleet, and in turn reducing impacts on those other vulnerable mixed stocks.

That's exactly the tact we took for Grays Harbor this year.

I sincerely hope any of you thinking about participating in the fishery seriously keeps that concept in mind. We sold our season to WDFW at the NOF meetings as a chinook conservation plan. We need sports to honor that by quickly catching their limits of coho and exiting the fishery ASAP to minimize chinook encounters. If we can't demonstrate the required discipline to do so THIS YEAR, kiss this type of unique opportunity good-bye in the future.

I know it's hard to go against the CCA mantra on the Columbia...but if you think about it logically instead of ideologically, then you are describing the downfall of the "selective commercial fishery" so far as recovery and/or sportfishing goes...

Fish on...

Todd

Bonk the 1st two........while it was talked about at NOF.......I can't find anything in the "2010/2011 Sportfishing Rules Pamphlet".

September 16 draws closer, if its in the Pamplet, then I'd like the page its on....so I can relate that to others.

Thanks

Email from Region 6---Dated August 27th

" Bill, I wanted to make sure to get back to you regarding the conversation we had about the stop fishing language not in the pamphlet for the Chehalis River. As we talked about the other day, this topic was a discussion at NOF. I told you I wasn't sure what happened with that conversation after NOF. After talking with Kirt Hughes, he's not sure why we didn't use that language either. It was one of those items that we missed while focused on the bigger topics this year. We certainly need to do a better job of capturing the decisions made through the NOF process.

I don't know if that is the explanation you were looking for. I hope it answers your question though.

Thanks. Barbara McClellan
Area Fish Biologist"

I can see that under many scenarios the bonk the first two would shorten the season and possibly result in a larger kill of wild fish than the current system will. Of course all this is based upon SWAGs of mortality rates, and ratios of wild vs. hatchery. Those SWAGs are then skewed by the fact many fish with an adipose are in fact hatchery origin.

IMHO the mortality rate for coho landed in their first few days in fresh water is very high. I have no solid science to back my opinion, which puts me in the same boat as almost everyone else. But I know on some days a lot of unclipped coho die from the hooking, handling, etc. Which system is worse - who knows? It just hurts to work hard to revive a big beautiful wild coho and then watch it sink out of sight.

I will be curious to see how the Grays Harbor bonk two and go home thing works. My guess is many anglers will make that the worst of both worlds by retaining two wild fish and then C&R for the rest of the day. I hope not, but am skeptical.

If what I am reading from DrifterWA is correct, then Doc's bonk the first two didn't get in the regs.

OK guys, anyone that thinks Kirt, Ron, and a couple of others are stupid is not thinking. That said if you think a subject as critical and going against the grain as "bonk first two" just somehow was forgotten then I have a bridge I need to sell you for your retirement!

I like the tribes idea's, if were getting to many hatchery fish onto the 10% of remaining habitat then keep the hatchery releases the same and increase the habitat..Crazy white man going to have it all flocked up worse than we already have..

That is what it was for GH I think. Francis is the man with the memory.