Dan,

Actually, this is an example of a fisheries management decision that was made on the basis of what's good for the fish rather than what's popular among anglers. The spring/summer general trout fishing season on streams and beaver ponds used to open on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend precisely because it was popular with anglers. That changed to June 1 in about 1983 or 84.

The reasoning is sound. The vast majority of fish present in streams accessible to anadromous fish over the Memorial Day weekend are spawning steelhead and downstream migrating salmon and steelhead smolts. The holiday crowd brings out a lot of people, some serious anglers and many more very casual anglers. The statistics of the 70s and early 80s were not good for fish. Very high mortality to smolts, most of which were hooked on barbed and baited hooks (the combination producing the highest mortality rate in several studies), and the majority of the adult fish caught were taken, rather than released, pre-spawners and spawnouts alike.

I used to fish steelhead consistently every Memorial Day weekend and caught fair numbers of bright, unspawned fish. But for each of those I caught one or more spawned out fish and numerous smolts. So as a resource management and resource stewardship issue, leaving streams closed Memorial Day weekend is the correct decision, rather than pandering to an incremental increase in fishing license sales that cause a net loss to the resource.

You say those boneheads could sell hundreds of licenses with little impact on the fish, but the facts do not support your contention. How do you figure it otherwise? In fact, the June 1 opener sees much the same situation in the rivers, but the impact ends up being so much lower because the holiday crowd isn't around.

Talk about boneheads, until 1976, the former Department of Game actually stocked catchable trout in streams occupied by anadromous fish for the Memorial Day weekend stream season opener. That action naturally encouraged people to come out and fish and contribute to the unintended consequence of harvesting spawning steelhead and having a blood bath with smolts. The campground visions of those days are still in my mind, and as a kid, I was one of those who didn't know the difference but was thrilled to catch a bucket of "trout." I guess the personal experience has a lot to do with why I don't object much to the present season opener.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.