It seems that every year the state over estimates on the amount of fish we are "supposed" to get and then half way through the run we are scrambling with emergency closures and reduced take in regs. EVERY YEAR! When are we going to get a friggin clue here? Especially letting the commercial and tribal take theirs before mother nature gets hers.
Just for the record, the sports were unleashed on that same run before ma nature got hers, too. And we as a user group went way over our allowable impacts as well, even with the early closure on April 21.
ODFW/WDFW design and execute the fishery. The users simply participate to the extent allowed by the rules ordained by both states.
On a run-size of 180K and a mark rate of 87.5%, the 2% non-treaty impact represents about 450 dead ESA-listed upriver spring chinook. The sport:comm split was set at 60:40 so the sport share of that 450 dead springers is 270 fish.
click here for summary of catch and wild-handle The managers believe about 3904 ESA-listed springers were handled by the sports below Bonne... at a 10% mortality, we killed about 390 fish.
Since the sport impact allocation was only 270, we have already exceeded our allowable impact by 44% based on the below-Bonne sport fishery alone. A few more ESA springers have died in the above-Bonne sport fishery over the past 3 weeks as well.
So be careful about casting blame directly on the user groups... if that were the case, we would be just as guilty. The real blame rests on WDFW/ODFW and their respectiive commissions.... they are all too content to prosecute this contentious fishery on nothing more than paper fish!
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"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey)
"If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman)
The Keen Eye MDLong Live the Kings!
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