This is something I posted on a different website when the topic of being "selective" when fishing came up...I think it's important to not talk apples and oranges when "selective" fishing comes up, and to be sure which one you are talking about when you are discussing it.

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Those defintions are for different ways of looking at "selectivity"...it can be done in lots of ways...and the Columbia River provides good examples of all of them.

They are determined by where you fish, when you fish, and what you fish with...for instance, during the spring Chinook fishery on the lower Columbia, hook and line fishing is very selective, in that it catches virtually zero wild steelhead. Can't get much more selective than that.

That's a "how you fish" example...steelehead just don't spend much time hitting the wrapped Kwickies and trolled herring...the sport fleet catches very few.

For selective fishing within a species, it gets a little muddier. The hook and line fishery on the Columbia is no more selective than a gillnet when it comes to differentiating between catching wild or hatchery springers. You're just as likely to catch a wild versus a hatchery as a net is...they catch both equally well, and in direct proportion to the wild/hatchery composition of the run. Neither nets or hooks are selective, in that sense.

The third definition is "how good is a technique at releasing non-target fish, while harvesting target fish"? In that sense, hook and line is the way to go, as the mortality rate for "gillnet and release" is far worse than than the mortality rate for "catch and release".

Where those lower Columbia fisheries take place has an impact on the "selectivity" of a fishery, too...fishing above the Willamette is far more "selective" at avoiding the ESA Willamette springers, no matter if you are a sportie or a gillnetter, than fishing below the Willamette is...you reduce the encounter rate by fishing where the non-target fish aren't.

Additionally, the farther upstream that salmon and steelhead get, the better they are "hardened" in fresh water, and the better they survive being caught and released, again regardless of whether you are using a net or a fishing rod. A net still has a higher release mortality than does hook and line, but both are better than if the same fisheries are conducted downstream farther.

Among sportfishermen, being more or less "selective" can be impacted by what you fish with, too. In freshwater, studies have shown that using bait or not has little impact on the release mortality of non-target adult upstream fish, though bait does increase the encounters, which increases the overall mortality.

In the salt, say at Sekiu, the release mortality on coho caught with herring is atrocious...perhaps as high as 50% of the released wild coho die anyway. The most effective way to combat that is to not use bait; stick to spoons or plugs, or flies. On the other hand, allowing the retention of wild coho, with no release allowed for bait caught fish, might actually lead to less wild coho being killed...higher mortality rate (100% for fish caught on bait, as they are all bonked), but overall lower mortality due to "catching your two, and going home"...you kill less by killing the first two than you do by sifting through ten wild coho to bonk your two hatchery coho, which might lead to not only two dead hatchery coho, but five dead wild coho while doing it.

When we fished in Grays Harbor this past fall for coho, we were allowed two coho per day, and only one could be wild. When we retained our boat's "wild portion", we agreed to quit even if we had hatchery coho spaces left on our tags...we couldn't ethically keep fishing on the chance that we'd catch a wild coho and have to release it, with a high mortality rate. It would have been legal to continue fishing, but we chose to limit our impacts to what we had in the box, and call it good.

So, I don't think we need one definition of what "selective" is...we just need to make sure we are not talking apples and oranges when we are comparing the relative selectivity of two different fisheries...

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My point is that saying hook and line fishing is more "selective" than gillnets is either true...or not true...depending on which defintion you use.

Leaving hook and line angling out for a minute, another example would be comparing fish traps to gillnets...

Neither are selective for a few of the definitions. They both catch everything around...non-target species, wild target species, and hatchery origin target species.

The difference between the two is their relative abilities to release the non-target species, or non-target wild components of target species, and that difference may be substantial.

When we as sport anglers say we are "more selective" than gillnets, the term of art "selective" would say that's not true.

I don't know if the genie is too far out of the bottle to ever get it back in, but in my opinion the better terminology would be "selective harvest", or "relative release mortality" when comparing hook and line fishing to other forms of commercial fishing.

I think it is too far to go back and use better wording, but I do think we need to strive to make it clear what we are talking about when we say we are "more selective"...what we mean to say is that we release non-target fish better, with a higher survival rate.

Too often I've participated in discussions in meetings where the two sides aren't on the same page...they're talking about different definitions of being selective, and don't even realize it...and as such, they are both really frustrated when the other party can't understand where they are coming from.

Besides making for a more clear discussion, if you frame the argument around the relative mortality of released non-target fish, that's the argument that we win hands down...so that's the way we have to be clearly stating our points.

Fish on...

Todd

Good points Todd. I agree. BTW - I think I met a relative of yours (maybe the father-in-law) at a meeting at UW associated with selecting a building management contractor.

Seein' as how I'm not married, it probably wasn't my father in law! That was probably my dad, his company does that sort of thing.

Fish on...

Todd

Good point. What's the best way for any interested parties to help keep that ball rolling in the proper direction in the community?

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I think that saying "selective harvest" is most accurate, as it pertains to selectively putting target fish in the box, and releasing non-target fish with the lowest relative mortality.

We all keep hearing about how sport anglers are "more selective", or how commercial fishermen need to get "more selective"...and like I said above, depending on which defintion of "selective" you are using, it's really misleading to say that.

Keep it at "selective harvest" and we should be able to better make our point...and be able to recognize when the commercial industry is not really addressing the issue when they tell us how "selective" gillnets are...because the issue is harvesting target fish, and successfully releasing non-target fish.

Fish on...

Todd

All good points...

Time and area specific fisheries can be considered selective just as much as "the missing adipose fin" fisheries are. In fact some gillnet fisheries can harvest an amazingly high proportion of hatchery fish with little or no incidental impacts to wild fish or non-target species.

Thanks for the refreshing views about selctive fisheries.

Good read Todd, it's amazing to think how many coho are killed out at Sekiu to try and retain two hatchery ho's. The only thing I like about the pink years is that many retain their limits of fish thinking that they're coho.

"Selective harvest" it is.

The right buzz word is what makes things "buzz" in the political world. Appropriate terminology often determines whether an idea sinks or swims.

Would you rather call it reckless obscene deficit spending or does "stimulus package" sound more palatable?

(Actually stimulus package sounds more like something that might arrive in the mail in a plain brown wrapper without a return address)