Goinfishin,

WDFW has the authority to board, or haven an observer on board, any of the gillnetters participating in the fishery. WDFW didn’t do that on boats when the owner/operator resisted. There is a term for that, but I shouldn’t print it on a family-oriented web site.

Gillnets let most of the steelhead through safely, but they have a high interception rate and mortality rate on wild spring chinook, which are also ESA listed. Tangle nets don’t kill so many wild chinook, which is a priority so that they can fish for more of the hatchery chinook. However, 4 ½" tangle nets catch many more steelhead than 9" mesh gillnets. The recovery tanks actually work pretty well when properly used for that purpose. So they “need” to increase the allowable impact on ESA steelhead in order to fish for more hatchery chinook.

I only fished for springers twice, and I didn’t “suffer” from the monitoring. Neither did the gillnetters, which was a problem, since some of them admit they don’t follow the rules when no observer is on board.

IMO, this is a stupid fishery. It is biologically unsupportable. It isn’t supported economically, either. Socially, it preserves a small piece of the dying non-treaty gillnetting “tradition,” at the expense of the broader based social benefit of many citizens enjoying fishing for spring salmon with lower mortality rates to wild ESA salmon, and almost no impact to ESA steelhead. If someone can explain an intelligent rationale for this fishery, I would so love to hear it. This fishery makes less sense to me than commercial buffalo hunting, which doesn’t harm other ESA species.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.