After hearing public testimony in December on a package of sport fishing regulation changes, the commission also set specific fishing seasons on a variety of fisheries around the state and adopted new regulations that:

Allow boat anglers in areas where a saltwater license is valid to continue using fishing or shellfishing gear until every legal fisher on board has a daily limit.

These rules were posted on the WDFW web site and seem to be rules that went into effect as soon as they "adopted" them, but if they are not yet law.....they should post that also.

On Saturday we were all checked at Port Townsend (on the water) and all of us with a salmon on board were told that the person who bagged the fish had to take his gear out of the water. When the fisheries officer was told about the new regulation, all he would say was, I haven't seen a note about it yet, so the old rule stands. At least he did not give any of us a ticket. I must add that the gentleman and lady officer were very cordial with my boat and just asked us to pull one rig as we were trolling and I just swung my barbless gear to him, while still trolling the rest of the gear.

If there are any officers out there please give us a clear picture about how to read these changes as current law or not.

Thanks.



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Steve Ng....The FishNg1
99 F-350 Powerstroke 4x4 , 18ft Alumaweld Formula Vee Sled, 115 Yamaha, and now also Campion 215 walkaround, 135 Merc.

On the WDF Website the Boat Limit Rule is included in their "Concise Explanatory Statement" and from the following text sounds like it doesn't go into effect until May 1 since they don't have an emergency order shown to override.

The "Concise Explanatory Statement" lists the
changes to sportfishing rules that were
adopted by the Fish and Wildlife Commission
at their February meeting. Unless they are
put in place earlier by an emergency
rule, these changes will take effect May 1,
2001, and will be listed in the
2001-2002 fishing pamphlet, available on May
1.

I also have the news release that the department had on their web site in hand. It doesn't state when the regulation takes effect. It does state that the new boat limit rule was "adopted".

I have been in a couple of meetings with WDFW where this was discussed. It seems that it is an enforcement issue. Many sports fishermen on individual boats continue to troll gear after they have caught their blackmouth/king. In many instances this could be justified because the limit was two fish of which one could be a king. This meant that you could continue to fish for silvers. Most sportsfishermen that I know would pull their rods once they fulfilled their daily limit of one king and one silver or two silvers.

The biggest offenders of the original ordinance have been the Charter Boat fleet. The charters typically encouraged all fishers to continue fishing until the boat limit had been attained. According to WDFW, this was an enforcement nightmare. (How I will never understand! Has anyone ever been on or seen a charter get boarded by WDFW?) They adopted the rule to make a commonplace deviation from the regulations legal.

Another regulation change that has been adopted is a change to the possession limit. Sportsfishers (areas 1-6) can now only posess "in fresh form", on board their vessel, one days legal catch limit of a sportsfish species for each legal angler. I have been told that fish must be processed to not be considered fresh. (canned, smoked, frozen)