Salmon, Sturgeon, Steelhead fishing Chronicles

As much as I am saddened I am also exited. After many years of beating my head against the wall regarding salmon fishing in Oregon I am finally going to get to fish on a regular basis with no worries of closed seasons or reduced limits. I am going Walleye fishing. While I have done it in the past it is usually looked on in fishing guide circles as something we do only when there isnt any thing else to catch. The other problem with guiding for walleye is that 90% of the clients come from the northern mid west and no more about these fish than any of us northwest natives will ever know. But this year I am expanding my quest for walleye and instead of only a month or so I will be fishing for them for 3 months, next year probably more. As a full time guide in order to survive I feel I have to move at least some of my trips to warmwater species away from Salmon, steelhead and sturgeon. While this may not sit well with the die hard Walleye guys I am also helping the Salmon and Steelhead by catching and removing these non native salmon eating predators. Hey they are great on the table and the Columbia River is home to some of the biggest eyes in the world. I am actually kind of exited about doing something different, something that I can always fish for, something that the commercial gill nets dont target. Kind of sad that a full time salmon, sturgeon and steelhead guide is exited about Walleye dont you think. Fishery Managers should find it sad that they dont care enough about our regions premier gamefish - Salmon, steelhead and sturgeon that full time guides get exited over Walleye dont you think.

Salem Oregon. Department officials with Oregons fish and wildlife dept are facing tough budget shortfalls due to a decrease in license and tag sales for both hunting and fishing. It appears that license and tag sales for both popular activities are in decline. They are running ad campaigns and promoting activities aimed at recruiting new participants in the outdoor activities. Now my take on it. Do you think the reason for decline might be because of reduction in opportunity ie reduced seasons, bag limits or closed seasons all together. Do you think it might be because even when the season is open the reasonable expectation of success is fairly low due to lack of fish or game. How many people will buy a license for next year or put in for a hunt when the success rate has been on a steady decline due to mis-management of the fish and wildlife they are pursuing. How many years will people buy a salmon license and tag, plan a vacation for a couple of weeks of fishing only to find out the season has been closed or the gill nets were allowed in just before they arrive. News flash ODFW license and tag sales will increase with increased oportunities and a reasonable expection of a successful fishing or hunting trip. You cant keep reducing and restricting without expecting to sell less licenses and tags. You cant keep ruining families vacations by allowing commercial non selective fisheries to happen in the middle of the limited sport fishing seasons. Kind of a no brainer I would think but appearantly for those that decide this sort of thing brains arent an issue - never had one - never needed one before - politics and lobbyist always took care of the brain things

The Columbia River is home to some of the best salmon runs on the west coast or at least it should be. As a full time fishing guide in Oregon I find myself in the middle of some perplexing issues regarding salmon fishery management, or should I rephrase to blatent mis-management. The states of Oregon and Washington still place a small amount of commercial fisherman that use outdated gill nets to fish the Columbia ahead of the many thousands of recreational salmon fisherman with regards to management decisions and harverst allocations of the regions salmon. One recent example is the just ended summer chinook salmon season. Sport fisherman got a whopping one week season below Bonneville Dam. During the one week season fishery managers displayed clearly the bias in favor of commercial in river fisheries by allowing the whole gillnet fleet into the river from Bonneville Dam to the mouth right in the middle of the very short one week sport season. For those that arent familiar with the impact gill nets have on a sport fishery lets just say they vacuum the river out to the point that it takes a full week or more for fish numbers to build back to even remotely fishable levels. To add insult to injury they then come out with the announcement that sport effort and catch rates had been to high and they will have to close the whole river for sport fisherman including the upper section above Bonneville Dam (previously open the the end of July). The really strange thing is that during all other popular sport salmon seasons they have creel checkers at all the main ramps recording sport fishermans harvest. During this summer chinook season no fish checkers were present at many of the more popular launch ramps. With no one counting the catch how exactly can the statement be made that sports catch and effort was to high. I fished most of this season and lets just say the catch was very low in many cases non existant. To make matters even more frustrating the upgraded the run size to a much larger number while leaving the sport season closed and opening it back up to gillnets. It gets better this year for the first time in a very long time we have a large number of sockeye salmon returning which should be good news because the numbers of returning sockeye to the snake river system have been on the brink of extinction. What do these geniuses do - they open it to a commercial net season even with the ESA listings on the Sockeye and many of the endagered ESA supposedly protected Wild steelhead that will also be caught in the smaller mesh nets intended for sockeye salmon. What in the hell is it going to take to root out the crooks that run these organizations. To me it would be very simple math to take a look at the amount of sport boats full of happy anglers enjoying a day on the river during an open season with a river full of fish and figure out the economic value of the sport fishery and to see that it far outweighs the value of a commercial net fishery especially considering the fact that the gillnets kill wild endangered fish while sport caught wild fish are required to be released. Some do die but the mortality rate is almost non existant compared the the raping of the resource caused by gillnets. It is time to figure out who needs to be fired, voted out of office and in some cases prosocuted. It makes absolutely no sense that this blatent disregard for our fish and regions hundreds of thousands of sport fisherman continue. Heads need to roll and now.

This is what the headlines should read. The recent news about the Pacific Ocean salmon closures is disturbing news at best. It also seems to be an every year type of deal these days. This years collapse of the Sacramento river chinook salmon and the continued struggles with the Klamath river chinook salmon are the reason for this emergency Ocean fishing closure. What you wont read about is the reasons for these problems. The Sacramento River Delta is a vast river drainage which is home to many different species of fish, for now at least. It is also soon to become a desert. Water resource managers continue to drain the delta for water to be used in other areas of the state which are desert. More green lawns, More golf courses, More houses in inhospitable areas and more large corporate farms in areas not suitable for crops unless they steal the water from some where else. Same thing with the Klamath River, it to has been virtually drained to irrigate desert farm land. Combine habitat damage, lack of water and throw in a few barriers to fish trying to return to there spawning grounds (dams) and its no wonder the fish are in trouble. Has it occured to anyone that fish need water? Now on to the other part of the Problem - Overharvest. I for one find it amazing that the biologists and fishery managers on both the state and federal levels can sit there straight faced and say the ocean from northern Oregon through California is closed for salmon fishing to protect the fish but that Alaska and Canadian fisheries wont be effected. News Flash Folks - They are the biggest part of the problem. Most of the west coasts salmon migrate to the north while in the ocean, and most of them wind up caught in the commercial fishery in Alaskan and Canadian Waters. The biologists are all blaming food source issues for the unprecidented collapse while turning the other way on addressing the commercial overharvest that is occuring. To me if anyone is really concerned about the fish fishing restrictions both commercial and sport should encompass the entire west coast of North America.

It seems that just about every year now days headlines appear regarding some type of emergency salmon fishing closure on the Pacific Coast. What these articles and news stories fail to do is explain the specific areas and extent of the effects of the closure. The salmon fisheries on the West Coast cover the Pacific Ocean all the way from Alaska to Mexico and literally thousands of rivers that drain into the Pacific Ocean. The species of salmon are also quite diverse made up of Chinook (king), Coho (silver), Sockeye (red), Chum (dog), and Pink (humpy) salmon. On the Chinook salmon we have winter run, spring run, summer run and fall run fish. These differing runs have completely different life cycles and migration habits which means they have differing seasons in both the ocean and the rivers they return to. The rivers that flow into the pacific all have different runs of differnt species of Salmon that are unique to that system. Each river has differing migration/spawning schedules and different species and sub species of fish that call it home. One river may have only Fall run salmon, another may have only spring run fish, another river may have fish runs in the spring, winter, summer and fall. One river may have many species of salmon, the next river may only have one species. Now on to the recent news headlines of “spring salmon season closed in Oregon and California” The Closure is for the Ocean Commercial and Charter season which happens to begin in the spring. It is not the same thing as the spring chinook salmon season that occurs in the Rogue River, Umpqua River, Columbia River, Willamette River, Tillamook Bay and many other rivers I probably missed. It affects the Ocean fisheries only and does not affect the Rivers. Now onto the reasons for this latest closure. The biologists are concerned about a serious collapse of the Sacramento River chinook salmon and a serverly depressed chinook salmon population on the Klamath river for the last several years. All of the different fish from all of the differnt runs and rivers are all hanging out in the same places in the Ocean, which means that you could catch any of them without being able to protect one or the other in the Pacific Ocean. Once they enter the rivers they are not mixed stock fish anymore and can be effectively managed. So the only way to protect depressed on endangered fish offshore is to close fishing allowing all the fish to return to there river of origin. So to sum it up is spring chinook salmon season closed - NO! Is Ocean chinook salmon season closed - YES!