I fished of the port docks in Longview for sturgeon today.The fishing sucked.For me anyhow.
There were at least 3 gillnetters working just below the mouth of the Cowlitz.I watched one of them set his nets.and run them.I counted 68 chrome bright silvers go aboard. 2 went back...2 wilds out of 68, Ive never done that good in the Cowlitz.Of course the technique used to revive them was this.Toss them over and let the air rush through their gills before they hit the water.Thats why they can claim a 2-5% mortality rate on the fish they release.
The whole process took 1 1/2 to 2 hours.3 netters working 12 hours a day.you can figure out how many fish arent making it into the tribs.My estimate is about 1500 fish per session.7500 a week.Just for these 3 boats.Multiply that how many times? DAMN.
This is only one small area.There are a lot more nets in the river than that.Plus as soon as they ran their nets they would drop directly below the next netter and do it again.Pretty much shutting off the river for 12 hours at a time.
Needless to say I left more than just a little pi$$ed off and totally frustrated.

Yeah those gillnetters are a fine bunch of guys aren't they? The thing that is os frustrating is the fact that NONE of them need the money they get from selling those fish! NONE of them!!! They do it for extra income or lease the rights to someone else. They then ***** about not getting enough money for their catch.

All those fish for 30 cents a lbs. It is BS. That is all I can say.

If they're getting paid so little for the fish then what's the point? All I can figure is that they are scoring big on all the females with all the eggs that they sell across seas. There needs to be a law against caviar!!! Eggs are to be used as bait, forget the human consumption.
They need to leave all of our wild fish alone, sounds like they really took care of them when they released them. What happens when they do all this at night?? Do they really attempt to release the wild fish or are they just filleting?
Crooked *******s, go start some fishfarms and stick with that. Or how about having the hatcheries just sell fish to the fish buyers, a lot of the fish in the larger rivers return to the hatcheries bright, at least bright enough to sell and eat. This way every hatchery will be able to meet there quota of fish before the netters wipe out the run.
Keith