Bummer. It seems like a small law...that you have to be licensed to operate a Washington Charter Boat to pick up clients on the Washington side... but it's not...nor is it one that any captain wouldn't know.

He screwed up, and he'll end up paying for it. He'll get his boat back, I'm sure, but not until he kicks in some pretty hefty fines.

I know of several charter operators who have both Washington and Oregon licenses so that they can pick up clients on either side this time of year...that's the way to do it if'n you don't want to get busted.

Fish on...

Todd

One less boat to deal with now from 8/22/14 thru 8/31/14.Good luck,

SZ

So the Oregon licensed charter skipper was caught operating out of a WA port. Legitimate bust; his bad.

However, while I understand the WA charter operators wanting to protect their turf I am not sure I agree with the following quotes as extracted from the article:

“They’re very good at what they do,” Smith (Coho Charters) said about the illegal operations. “When they show up en masse, they tend to close seasons down faster.”

“You can only have so much pressure on a limited resource,” Cenci agreed.

Charter operators provide a service for licensed recreational anglers who are constrained by seasons and daily/possession limits - charter operators do not constitute another user group with their own allocation (nor should they). It has been my perception that the limited entry designation has been a means to protect the financial well being of those already holding charter licenses and to keep prices of those saleable licenses high. Also, as I understand it a charter boat must have a limited entry salmon license in order to charter for tuna out of a WA port.

You might say, "O'K, so what?"

Well, not only does that tend to keep available seat numbers low it tends to keep angler trip fees high plus there is another aspect to it. There are a number of WA guides who have purchased OR guide licenses and are able to legally fish the estuary although they cannot pick up WA clients on the WA side.

Those guides are paying their fees to OR. They tend to stay on the OR side and spend their operating money there. And their clients tend to stay on the OR side of the river spending money for rooms, meals and an occasional beer or three on the OR side. From my perspective it seems WA's economy is missing out on a big part of the economic potential tied to the lower Columbia River fishery.

I just have to wonder how much additional money would flow to the WA side if WA's limited entry restriction did not apply to the LCR?

the limited entry as I understand it only applies to the saltwater and lower Columbia.

this keeps the rod hours down on the ocean for the limited salmon available, due to the fact that many private boat operators in Washington will not go into the ocean.

historically my grandpa like most other peoples fished from small open boats. inside Puget Sound and the strait's. they went to Westport and took charters...

Oregon has had a history of fishing the open ocean in small boats. C-dory's and the like came from those fisheries. small boats designed for big water. it is only the last 20-30 years that the huge fleet of large private boats have hit the ocean in Washington.

the rule could be a bad rule at this point, I don't know. but it was designed to lengthen the seasons, by limiting the number of rods on the water each day.

Not sure when the limited entry came into existence but at one point there were several hundred charter boats operating out of WA ports. I don't think limited entry was in play then.

The observations/questions I posed were directed primarily at the LCR (B-10) fishery.

Your perception about where the limited entry is applicable is consistent with what I wrote.

Can a charter with only a Washington license pick up customers on the Oregon side?

limited entry started in 1977.
About the same time frame as the very restrictive fishing rules. Also about the same time frame as when the Washington troll fleet was dieing off.

your perception stated
"It has been my perception that the limited entry designation has been a means to protect the financial well being of those already holding charter licenses and to keep prices of those saleable licenses high."

while there is truth in there. it was also true that we had too many license holders and not enough fish AT THAT TIME. have times changed? yes, do we have more fish now? ummm I not willing to say yes to that for the state, but the seasons are getting longer.

the big question to me is, is it time to change the limited entry system. It may be the lower columbia needs to be off the list of areas needing protection. but I don't think the north coast is out of the woods, nor is Pudget Sound or Lake Washington (the other area of freshwater this rule applies to)

so please think about all affected areas before lobbying for the removal of limited entry.

I think you make some great points about the LCR fishery. It wasn't my intention to step on toes.

My toes are undamaged; no problem. I brought this up for discussion and to raise awareness of what I perceive as financial opportunity lost.

Some of the reports back from the OR launches on the LCR are of long lines and wait times and short tempers to include the guides.

Does it make sense to continue to keep the blinders on while business operators (guides) from WA have to go to OR (or are able to go to OR depending on your viewpoint) to access that fishery and pull WA fishermen and their dollars into OR?

It seems that any attempt to rationalize limited entry as it applies to the LCR falls flat given the "common ground" aspect of that fishery.

Jerry from the Washington state Legislature web site.

"A charter boat licensed in Oregon may fish without a Washington charter license under the same rules as Washington charter boat operators in ocean waters within the jurisdiction of Washington state from the southern border of the state of Washington to Leadbetter Point, as long as the Oregon vessel does not take on or discharge passengers for any purpose from any Washington port, the Washington shore, or a dock, landing, or other point in Washington. The provisions of this subsection shall be in effect as long as the state of Oregon has reciprocal laws and regulations."

So I would say no a Washington boat can't pick up passengers in Oregon...
but to CYA... I will say I found very little info on Oregon Charter Laws. it seems to still be open entry and the cost looks like around $1000 in fee's to get a License. there are equipment and registration laws that may cost you some money but I bet you would need those things to be a guide in this state also. I did find a Washington salmon charter license for sale for $25,000 so that shows the difference in entry between the 2 states, and explains why you would guide out of Oregon rather then hope to find a Washington License. I had a slow day so I did some internet digging... I am likely to have missed something so I wouldn't use my research to fill out a business plan... but it should give some basic answers to the discussion.

You guys better factor in shipping into your equation. Last thing they want with the growing oil exports at Port Westward is more small boat traffic. The USS Cole incident made managing small boat traffic a priority with Homeland Security.

Limited entry to commercial salmon troll and sport charter licenses in the ocean, along with limited entry to commercial purse seine and gillnet licenses in Puget Sound were in large part a response to US v WA. When essentially the same amount of harvestable salmon from year to year had to be split 50:50 with treaty fishing tribes, the non-treaty harvest had to decrease.

Limited entry was one means. Reducing the salmon catch limit from 3 to 2 was another. The 1 chinook limit in the ocean and LCR is yet another means of reducing NT harvest.

Prior to the limited entry laws, you could buy a WA sport-commercial license to sport fish for salmon in the ocean with no catch limit. You could fish up to 6 rods. A guy I knew had one of these licenses and took a month off his job each summer and sport fished in the ocean and paid for his "working vacation" with his catch.

A lot of regulations intended to reduce salmon harvest have their roots in US v WA.

Sg

I know this is nit picking but there wasn't really a "sport commercial" license. What was done was to buy a commercial troll license. In 1971 when I bought my first troll license, there was an inside license, about $40 (to fish inside the three mile limit) and an outside license,$10(to fish outside the three mile limit). There were a lot of people fishing these licenses with sport gear. The state started clamping down on this with regulation changes like the six rod limit and requiring the rods had to be fastened to the boat. When limited entry was put in place the vast majority of these "sport commercial" troll licenses didn't have the quantity of catch record or years of fishing to qualify and were eliminated.

I was reading some stuff out of BC yesterday about their limited entry permits. where the author of the paper was saying that because they didn't set a tonnage limit on the permits. when they went to limited entry the net result was for the fleet to expand by over 400% based on tonnage. this happened between 68 and 77 I think. their catch actually went up (not nearly 400% but an increase) not down. as we know most of the fish they catch in the ocean up there come from Washington rivers so I am sure that didn't help the resources either.

Salmo g, is there a good paper out there that brings all the issues of the just after Bolt days to light? we had the Oregon Coho crash, the increased catch in Alaska and BC, the nets in all the rivers, expansive growth and de-watering in California, high seas drift netting... all around the same time it seems. I would love to read a whole coast wide how we got here paper.

If they caught one there are more...many more. The thing that has always puzzled me is the fact that they are screwing themselves. They cheat and don't follow the rules and then complain if the fishing sucks or the season is cut short. It's just another way of poaching. Then there are the people that do it right and they will fall victim to the same short season and/or lousy fishing. I'm so sick of all of this crap. Poaching is a reality that I think has not gained enough attention. What percentage of the total fish population are they getting? We're talking poaching the ocean, the rivers, Puget Sound and so on. Years ago my dad was fishing a small steelhead stream on Hood Canal. As he made his way up to a very secluded and difficult to get to hole he sees a guy fighting a fish. When he gets closer he finds that the dirt bag had 12 steelhead on the bank!!!! Back then they were all Native! My dad told the guy he was a disgrace to fishing. So what does the dude do? He leaves in a hurry without the fish. He could not have carried them all out anyway. In the overall picture 12 fish is a fraction of the take. You still have a ton of people poaching the rivers and salt water. I'm wondering if it's just a basic lack of intelligence and/or that ever present kill factor that some people can't resist. In this case it is obviously about the dollar and that is also another part of the overall picture. Greed!

Keta, Thanks for the correction. I had only heard it called "sport-commercial" so never knew the difference. I did hear the term "kelpers" for those who fished inside 3 miles I think.

Cncfish, No I don't know of any single paper or even a collection of papers that describes the story you ask about. Might make a good book for a small audience.

Sg

12 Fish is a fraction intill you multiply it by 10,000 and end up with a missing 120,000. The primary purpose of limited entry programs is to make the fishery more manageable, if they know how many participants they have then hitting a tiny number is so much easier. I have seen Washington charter permits for sale so this particular individual could have bought one.

Seems to me charter operations in OR and WA need to fall in line w/ each other, at least guide and six pack requirements. Makes no sense to have wide open entry on one side and limited on the other, at least as far as the Columbia areas are concerned. Why the discrepancy?

Because people are idiots?



Salmo, Kelpers where small sports type boats that had one or two hand gurdies. They bumped around kelp beds a lot, thus the name. That's how I got my start. by the end of the season I looked like a fiddler crab. My right arm was noticeably larger than my left from cranking those #25 cannonballs up and down all summer.

do people think increasing the number of guides on the washington side would have any positives for those who already fish over there? harder to find moorage, longer lines at ramps, even harder to find camp spots, hotel rooms, etc? are businesses on the washington side suffering during buoy 10?

there should be limited entry for guides in more fisheries, not less. guides are important for many anglers to access fisheries, but too many is bad for everyone.