We have a couple of pretty serious situations happening in MA 3/4 for us bottomfishers that like to fish Neah Bay and Lapush during halibut seas and before.
FYI-I misinterpreted #66 before and it is a full on rockfish Closure for Neah Bay other than blacks and blues rockfish (Seabass) and yellowtail rockfish. Both of these fish are large schooling migratory fish. Urgent you write in against these proposals. MA 4B was taken out to all other rockfish but Seabass and now it is written to remove the Bonilla Tatoosh line and manage MA4 with 4B. See photo

1. WDFW Proposal #66 is to close off all rockfish except black and blue rockfish in MA4. This needs to be sent in by everyone to stop this. WFC has written this proposal with Sierra Club Support and twisted info around and put it on their website taking rockfish catch information out of text and spinning it to say that it takes 35 "protected rockfish" (any rockfish in MA4B that are not seabass) to catch one lingcod. Also 32 Rockfish per Cabezon. See their site:
http://wildfishconservancy.org/about/pre...ed201d-rockfish


Please go here and tell them to not pass WDFW Proposal #66:
Marine area 4 has a very healthy supply of all kinds of rockfish and should not be managed as a Puget Sound Rock fishery and should be left to the people that work with WDFW to manage our ocean fisheries. This was already overturned a couple of years ago. It should removed as an option. About 85-90% of this region is already closed off to fishing through the 120’ line depth closure most of the year. I am attaching a picture of MA 4A and B to show how one tiny sliver of 4B is trying to manage the ocean MA4 gigantic underwater mountain ranges and canyons. They are full of fish and many areas that are unreachable to us.
http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/regulations/rule_proposals/comments/proposal.php?id=144

2. WDFW Proposal #65 Reduce lingcod season in MA 4B.
Please write in:
This area gets a strong return of Lingcod from the ocean. Lingcod are a large predator to rockfish and if we are trying to save Rockfish, leaving a voracious predator unchecked would be counterproductive About 85-90% of this region is already closed off to fishing for Lingcod through the 120’ line depth closure.
http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/regulations/rule_proposals/comments/proposal.php?id=146

With 47 people that have looked at this and no replies. I saw pretty much the same thing with shrimp with no feed back. I would like a heads up if people are responding to these or not. Please let me know with a simple "done" or something? I just don't know how to read this.

I'm looking into it.

Saw the information. Here is what I've done so far.

Emailed my Rep for District 19, Brian Blake. He was helpful in dealing with David Jennings during his non-confirmation.

Got in touch with my contact at the Makah Tribe, who heads their economic development council (EDC).

Also emailed the director of Clallam County's EDC, who was helpful in the previous closure in area 4B.

Have a person checking on the name of the outdoor writer for the Peninsula Daily News.

I would also suggest everyone, and I MEAN EVERYONE, email this Jamie Glasgow person, and demand that they correct the the article to reflect factual data, or give their source for the data. jamie@wildfishconservancy.org . Jamie is the person who submitted the rule change proposal, and also is their "director of Sciene and Research".

Good enough for you their Ron? Sorry, I'm slacking off today.

Already done on BD board Ron.

+2

Atta Boy Andy!!!!!
We all gotta work together to keep fishing. Thanks everyone for sending them in.
Ron

Done

Done.Good luck,
SZ

I have always been a proponent of shallow water rockfishing primarily with leadhead or metal minnow style jigs with barbless hooks.

I try to fish surface feeding rockfish like Blacks or Yellowtails. When it was legal to retain rockfish in Puget Sound I targeted CopperRockfish in 15-30 feet of water. I prefer to never fish deeper that 60 feet .

Cabezon at best are an incidental catch and would be extremely difficult to target. Lingcod are a different mater.

Instead of closures, why not make a regulation requiring all sport fishing boats to carry and use equipment to increase the number of fish survival by using techniques to reduce barotrauma. The most practical seems to be use of a heavy leadhead with a barbless hook used to lower the fish to depth that can be easily dislodged with a jerk on the line. A fish brought to the surface and quickly be released at depth and the fish will survive at a much higher rate than not using this method.

http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=fishingSportFishingInfo.rockfishconservation


At one time venting was thought to be a successful way to release with swim bladders taken at depth, but this method is no long recommended.

Education of fishermen and effective methods of releasing fish with swim bladders taken at depth in my opinion is a better option than suggested closures.

Respectfully,

Doug Wilson, co-author of New Techniques For Catching Bottom Fish, published in
1977.

Can someone write a good cut and paste.?

I am hoping to be able to make it out to Snow Creek this summer and of course that is the area I would hope to fish. With my 15'11 Sea Chaser , It is probably not feasable for me to make it far enough South to fish Ling Cod without putting myself in danger. (although I probably will )

Done and Done, thank you Ron.

Just read your post Ron and I can now say: DONE!

Thanks for all of your efforts .

Mike

Done & Done.
Thank you Ron!

Sebastes,
You are right on and we are going to be working with WDFW, NOAA, and some of the charters as well as recreational anglers to get not only the fish descender device information out there, but also recreational angler rockfish identification.

Last year some guys got onto Canaries in Neah Bay and marketed them as Yelloweye. That helped put us over our ESA impacts and now as a result, MA 3/4 deep water is going to close May 1, 2013 to bottomfishing other than halibut days. Last year we got a reprieve of the 120' depth line to June 1. In the past it was May 21. So we have some major problems to fix. Even though Canaries are ESA listed in the ocean, they are not as bad as first thought. YE are the driver.

I work with NOAA on rockfish and one of their people did a rockfish identification test with the general public showing 6 bottomfish and you were to identify them. They were Quillback, Copper, Yelloweye, Boccacio, and Canary Rockish and then a lingcod. I believe only about 5% got them all right. So how can we managing our fisheries when our own recs cannot accurately identify their catch.

This also brings up another point is that Boccacio are ESA listed in the Puget Sound (so are YE and Canaries). Were they accurately identified way back or were they another fish? I have seen a couple of old pictures many years ago that an angler had of some in the PS.

Wayne Palsson that used to be the WDFW Puget Sound rockfish person told me that there were tagging studies showing that Boccacio and Canary Rockfish have been tracked to move as much as 200 miles. So how do we know that these fish were not transcient to some degree to begin with, before they were ESA listed?

You bring up a good point about fish ID. Decades ago WDF did a survey where they looked at ID by pier anglers in PS. Not only were some of the IDs wrong but they were way wrong. It was funny then, but not when ID is important to management.

To emphasize how hard ID can be, though, a friend BC was overseeing a project where bios went out all over the province, sampled fish, and sent specimens back to the Museum. The pros got lots of them wrong. In most cases it was because some species do, in fact, look much alike. But he was pretty concerned that fish he could easily ID were being missed.

As other threads here have discussed, Dolly Varden and BUll Trout can be hard to tell apart. So, in some places they are managed as native char with them being considered "one" species but the management needs of the weaker are met.

If anglers are generally unable or unwilling to distinguish the various rockfish species then management will have to close completely or allow harvest on the whole group but meet the needs of the weak stock.

WDFW is often criticized for overly complex regs. Maybe. But the simple reg when some fish need protection is closed. Not saying that there are not other forces pushing this closure, or other agendas working against anglers, but it is up to the angling community to know what they are catching and to, as many folks here are with this issue, to be involved in crafting fisheries that may make nobody totally happy but allow a fishery and protect the weak.

Thanks for the announcement of the proposed closure.

Done.

Ron,

I have ID photos of all the commonly caught Rockfish in Washington Waters, it will take me a while to round them up, but I will post them in this thread and can email them to you for other educational uses.

Identifying rockfish can be confusing as physical color may be effected by the structure fish are on to some degree.

I am posting photos of commonly caught rockfish in the Neah Bay
Area 4.

These photos were taken several years ago near Skagway Rocks where the fish were taken in depths from 20 to 100 feet.

I personally believe that fishing for rockfish not deeper than 60 feet is preferable since fish taken from the surface down to 60 feet are rarely effected by decompression.

There are many locations in Area 4 that rockfish can be found at these shallow depths , mostly along the rocky shoreline or hovering above underwater structure. Black rockfish alongside and above
offshore structure can frequently be found in less than 60 feet. A school will rise near the surface if other fish are hooked at the 60 foot level and brought to the surface.

I have caught many lingcod in water 30 to 40 feet deep along the shoreline of Cape Flattery where targeting these species would not effect incidentally caught rockfish which can be easily released without danger of Barotrauma.

Cabezone in my experience are an incidental catch and I doubt that sportfishermen can effectively target them.

Rather than discarding rockfish taken at depths below 60 feet, maybe
we should be looking at rockfish regulations that allow retainment of
some demersal rockfish as is done in Alaska and British Columbia.

Daily limits are 3 pelagic rockfish such as Black rockfish and two demersal rockfish such as copper or quillbacks.

Allowing possession of one or two demersal rockfish could be a tool to not waste fish when they are incidentally caught.