Old Chum,

It is legal to take Dollys on a number of rivers, and I suppose that some anglers keep them. I've kept two in my life; none in the last 20 years or more. Here's my take on them as table fare. They are char, and their flesh is best when they are taken from cold water. One caught in the summer or early fall isn't likely to be as good as one taken in the winter. However, I recommend releasing them, independent of the ESA listing.

Since WDFW restricted the harvest of Dolly Varden, bull trout, native char in about 1991, the north coast and north Puget Sound populations have increased significantly. Some have increased ten-fold. Hold that thought for a minute. A drastic reduction in harvest has resulted in up to a ten-fold increase in population size.

Very few anglers used to fish for native char in most of our waters. There are many anglers fishing some northern rivers like the Skagit and Sauk specifically for the char, hoping they might get lucky and catch a steelhead. The "dolly" fishing has been pretty good. Now if the majority of the anglers decide to harvest what the law allows (2 over 20"), do you think the population will increase, stay the same, or decrease? Sorry, that's a trick question, cuz I already know it will decrease. Not as low as it was, but not as large as it is now.

Consider that these population recoveries have occurred over the last 12 years, with all the habitat degradation we have, altho char do spawn in the more pristine areas.

When I think about this turn around of the char population, I'm reminded of similar turn arounds with wild sea-run cutthroat and steelhead. There are things we can directly affect and things we can't. By choosing to not harvest, or limit the effective harvest to the low mortality rates associated with C&R, we can have larger fish populaltions, which just happen to correlate with improved fishing success, if success is measured in hookups rather than fish retained in the creel. There are now a lot of anglers fishing for native char. If they decide to harvest them, they are going to have a much greater effect than harvesting did in the 70s and 80s.

So I hope that no one discovers a really delicious recipe for Dolly Varden, or otherwise encourages more anglers to retain more char. If people don't harvest them, there will be improved fishing. Hold that thought.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.