I just hate it when I've got the day off, and the rivers are blown! I've got a dozen big red and orange winter run flies in my pack and some 1/16th oz. jigs that I want to try on the end of my floating line after reading about it here. But alas, high and muddy water abounds today.

So how about we solve the NW salmon and steelhead crisis today instead? RT's thread got me to thinking about this. Nothing new, as these are ideas I've mentioned before, some here, and some offline to various BBers.

Here they are again, to help address these specific fishing ailments and perceptions thereof:

1) Puget Sound and coastal river steelhead fishing.

The Wild Steelhead Coalition is taking an important first step at changing that which is our ability to control. We cannot control treaty fishing directly, but we can increase spawning escapements and reduce harvests of native/wild steelhead with a statewide wild steelhead release regulation.

The next step might be to increase the supply of hatchery steelhead available to the recreational fishery. The cheapest way to do this is not to build more hatcheries and raise more hatchery steelhead. The cheapest and most environmentally effective method is to make deals with treaty tribes on a willing buyer/willing seller basis. We've seen that the market for fresh steelhead has tanked. In 1979 I saw net caught steelhead delivered to commercial buyers of $2.50/pound. The last couple years have seen prices around $0.65 - $0.75/pound. Nobody's getting rich in this fishery. One tribal biologist told me that only a few members are even fishing steelhead. The buyer isn't taking any; apparently it isn't worth it. Those fishing are catching just enough to satisfy markets they have on the side through friends, the local tavern, or so-called roadside sales. This is legal so long as they get the fish recorded on fish tickets at the tribal fishery office.

The upshot is that the treaty steelhead fishery might be vulnerable to a viable marketing offer. The way this could work would be to acknowledge the tribe's treaty fishing right, encourage them to take what they wish from the treaty harvest allocation for ceremonial and subsistence, and offer to buy their projected commercial catch - if they leave the fish in the river uncaught. That is, if the tribe's projected commercial catch is 1,000 steelhead * 8 lb. each * $1.00/pound = $8,000, with the result that there are 1,000 more steelhead available for recreatinal harvest in that river. Recent WDFW estimates place the cost of putting a hatchery steelhead in the sport creel at $25 each.

The hitch? Of course there is one, or two actually. First, who gets the money paid to the tribe for the fish? The treaty right is the property of the tribe, but individual fishermen are "franchised" by tribal licenses or permits to fish and retain whatever money they receive for their catch. Tribes would need to develop a mechanism for allocating this wealth in a way that could be politically and socially acceptable to them.

The second hitch is where do we get the money to pay for the fish? (Especially since we paid for the hatchery fish once already.) I'd propose licensing fees or extra cost permits to fish rivers where such agreements are in effect. How much extra would you pay to fish a river that has no treaty commercial fishing for steelhead?

OK, that's one partial solution.

2) Lower Columbia River non-treaty gillnet fishery.

Nobody makes a living in this fishery. It exists based in large part on inertia - and the huge glut of hatchery produced chinook and coho. This fishery is also an economic dinasaur. Remember this fall when gillnetters were offered only $0.20/pound for their coho catch? A commercial fisherman can't make expenses in that fishery, let alone any profit.

What to do:
A) Approach the Direct Service Industries & the Northwest Power Planning Council for money. In various ways these entities have contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to salmon restoration with little positive effect. How much would it cost to buy out every non-treaty license and boat on the lower Columbia River? Now we could have the gov't do this and spend twice as much, or we could set up a covert operation through RT and Cowlitzfisherman to approach commercial license holders one at a time and try to cut a deal. The licenses shouldn't be worth too much at this time, but let's assume a generous $10,000 for each license and $25,000 per boat (although there are some leakin' Lenas in that fleet that would bring only a fraction of that). $35,000 * say 400 is only $14,000,000, which is a small fraction of what they've been spending on fish conservation that hasn't worked.

Next, cut hatchery production by a huge amount. How about by half? I'm just pulling that number out of the air, but a little modeling would narrow the choice to an optimal number. The commercial fishery on all those hatchery fish is a major factor that contributes to wiping out wild runs and creating no end of ESA problems. Cut hatchery production in the Columbia, and that much of the problem goes away. And frees up some money to use for the buy outs and other conservation measures. And sport fishers won't miss the hatchery cutback, since the commercial fleet that catches most of them won't be in front of you drastically reducing the number of fish you'll get a shot at in the river and tributaries.

And people who don't fish will still have fish available in the markets from the ocean troll (not proposing to buy it out yet, maybe later) and the various treaty fisheries that will still be supplying fish, Alaska fish, and of course the fish farms.

OK, that's the second idea.

3) Columbia River treaty Indian fishery on mixed ESA, wild, and hatchery stocks.

Most of us accept that treaty fishing rights are going to be around longer than most of us. So is it the fishing right that is the problem? Or is it the conflicts between treaty fishing and conservation? On the Columbia, the ESA has re-shaped the fishery, with the tribes getting the lion's share of the allowed incidental take of listed fish. Since sport fishing gear allows the safe release of incidentally caught unmarked, wild, listed salmon, and gillnets do not, a common sense change is in order. One that acknowledges the treaty fishing rights and cultural traditions.

Every salmon that passes Bonneville does so via a fish ladder, but for the few that enter the navigation locks. This is so simple that I cannot believe others haven't suggested it, but remember if you read it here first. 8^)

NMFS, the states, and private engineers in a heartbeat can modify the Bonneville fish ladders to include sorting facilities. All unmarked ESA fish and "restoration" fish would pass through to continue their migrations. The restoration fish are those unmarked chinook bound for the Yakima, Umatilla, etc. The marked hatchery fish could be diverted directly to refrigerated fish totes for tribal pickup if they so desire or - get this - you'll wonder what drug I was on this time -

Harvestable fish could also be diverted to the Corps' newly built replicate of Celilo Falls where treaty tribes' fishermen could exercise their traditional fishing culture and whack all those hatchery fish with no adverse impact to the ESA listed or special restoration stocks of fish. And at lower costs than gillnets and boats, using traditonal but effective dipnets. Expensive as this option would be, it still might be a drop in the bucket compared to all the silly measures the Corps and NWPPC have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in without producing much salmon recovery success. If it was worth building the Dalles Dam for the energy and drowning Celilo Falls, it's probably worth re-creating Celilo as part of an overall effort to recover and restore Columbia River salmon and steelhead.

The recreational fishery could continue pretty much the same - release wild and unmarked fish and creel marked fish.

OK, that was number 3. Now, in these partial solutions, who doesn't get what they want and are legally entitled to? Are these solutions practicable, that is, can they really achieve the desired conservation and fishery allocation outcome? And are the costs actually out of sight? They seem reasonable to me based on current expenses made in behalf of fish produciton, allocation, and conservation. But then, maybe this is just a drug induced haze. Except at my age, it's probably something else.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.