It’s kind of déjà vuish that the first time I really understood how bad the wild coho mortality could be was fishing the Little Susitna. We were using eggs and hooking one fish after another. These were fish coming in oh=n that tide. I soon realized that these fish were often badly harmed by C&R with bait. Since all we had was bait we stopped fishing after 15 or 20, I wonder now how many of those we killed. According to the study we may have killed 20 fish not counting the six we kept. I’m not proud of that just telling what happened. There were several other anglers near us practicing a lot of C&R on bait hooked coho. I suspect many of those died.
That seems like a place where the first limit landed should end the angler’s day. Not because of the wild, hatchery issue, but simply to avoid killing and wasting big numbers of fish. Farther upstream when they have toughened up perhaps more C&RE could be encouraged.
Did you ever see belly up fish or dead fish in the river?
What do you think the release mortality would have been with a fly rod?
Keith
Yes! I have watched more than one drift down out of sight. And I have seen dead chinook on the bottom of pools on the Vedder River.
I don't know what mortality might have been in a fly rod. Probably similar to bait as many fly caught fish are hooked in a nonlethal place, whereas many bait caught fish have taken the bait deeply. But many fly hooked fish are fought longer than bait hooked fish, so maybe a wash. The point is coho in estuaries are very tender fish. I think the quoted study was about right. There is a very high mortality rate from C&R on coho that are very recent arrivals from the salt.
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