3 days notice....

WDFW NEWS RELEASE
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
600 Capitol Way North, Olympia, WA 98501-1091
http://wdfw.wa.gov/

February 21, 2017
Contact: WDFW Region 5 Office, (360) 696-6211

One-day smelt fishery set to open on Cowlitz River

VANCOUVER, Wash. – State fishery managers approved a limited sport fishery for smelt on the Cowlitz River for Saturday, Feb. 25.

Under this year's rules, a portion of the Cowlitz River will be open to recreational dip netting along the shore from 8 a.m. until 1 p.m. for one day only.

The area open to sport dipping stretches from the Highway 432 Bridge upstream to the Al Helenberg Memorial Boat Ramp, located approximately 1,300 feet upstream from the Highway 411/A Street Bridge in Castle Rock.

Each dip-netter may retain 10 pounds of smelt per day, with no more than one day's limit in possession. Ten pounds is about a quarter of a five-gallon bucket. No fishing license is required to dip for smelt in Washington state.

This marks the fourth year that the state has allowed smelt fishing since 2010, when the species – also known as eulachon – was listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) along the Pacific Coast.

NOAA Fisheries, which oversees ESA-listed stocks, supports limited fisheries that contribute to research, said Cindy Le Fleur, regional fish program manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

"We're expecting a modest return of about 3 million pounds of smelt to the Columbia River this year," Le Fleur said. "That compares to an estimated 16.6 million pounds in 2014, when the run reached its recent peak."

The sport fishery was also limited to one day in 2016, when the run was estimated at 5.1 million pounds. Le Fleur said these fisheries have a limited impact on the overall smelt return, while providing biological data on the species' abundance.

Le Fleur said WDFW announced the decision to open this year's sport fishery after tracking catch rates in the ongoing commercial test fishery in the mainstem Columbia River. Managers were looking for weekly average landings to reach at least 150 pounds per fisher to feel confident that the run was likely as large as anticipated pre-season she said, noting that last week's landings averaged 281 pounds per fisher.

Hell it's not even a full day, just 5 hours!!!! How long have the netters been allowed to take????

If the run size estimate only supports one day, I'm okay with that, given that these fish are ESA listed.

However, what really fries me is that the folks dipping for smelt DO NOT NEED A FISHING LICENSE!. That's beyond incredible.

WDFW is asking for a huge increase in existing license fees, but they are not asking those folks who are dipping smelt to buy a license?!. Buying a license is a modest way of insuring the folks who are harvesting also support the infrastructure necessary to properly manage the fish and wildlife resources of our State, including law enforcement.

And it provides some accountability for following the rules and regulations. If you break the law (e.g., dip too many pounds of smelt), you can lose the privilege of fishing for them, or any other fish, in the State of Washington in the future. But if you don't need a license, that accountability is gone. And from what I've heard, taking too many smelit is a very common occurrence. So the enforcement of the smelt dipping regs falls on the backs of those of us who do buy a license every year.

Sorry for the rant, but this issue really bothers me.

OK - so licenses are not needed to partake. But do I have to wear a track suit? I have a sweet gold one with Puma's on it that I've been saving for a special occasion. Na Zdorovie!

I went, I saw, I watched.........thousands of people, dip nets in hand, dip dip dip and more dipping, not a smelt to be had........

I talked to people from Seattle, Tacoma, Yakima....all came to the Kelso area to do "the dip"......license or no license, wouldn't have matter today...there were no smelt in that area.

I heard tribal and NT commercial got some but the sports catch was a bust!!!!

I read that the biggest catch checked was 2. Not pounds, fish.

It was the perfect fishery. Lots of people participated and the resource was not impacted. Remember, it is about the opportunity.

Might add that in most surveys angler rate "being out there, being with friends, being in nature" ahead of catching something. So, it was perfect.

[quote=Carcassman] Remember, it is about the opportunity.

quote]

Wow, sounds like you are Ron Warren's partner, Ron liked to use that word "opportunity", when talking about seasons for sport fishing....I used it at a NOF meeting directed at the GH commercial season, they didn't think it was funny.

Opportunity is the metric that has always been used to measure recreational fishering and hunting. They are not considered as subsistence; the goal is participation.

Like I said, all the surveys I have seen about hunting and fishing always places catching/killing way down the list. Are all of them lying on the surveys??

A commercial season is, in fact, a business. They exist to actually put dead fish in the boat so they would not support "opportunity". Yet, on a number of occasions netters approached WDF requesting extra days because storms kept them off the water. Except for those who went out and caught fish.

Ron learned his lessons...

I've taken to including the word meaningful.....as in "meaningful opportunity."

To expand a bit on "meaningful opportunity". I take that to include that opportunity being sustainable.

While the 1 day smelt season produced lots of man-days (opportunity?) I doubt that future such opportunities without some reasonable expectation of success would be sustainable.

Curt

Opportunity is meaningless if there is not some expectation of success. The only time I bought an elk tag was as an add-on to the early archery deer. What I didn't know was that there were like 3 elk in the whole unit and WDG was having it open to eliminate them.

When I complained, I was told I could hunt elk elsewhere. Yeah, but that was were I was. If I had known there were essentially no elk I wouldn't have wasted the money.

When a season is opened there needs to a reasonable population of the target species there. There should also be, as part of the long-range planning, a quantified level of encounters/harvest. It will make things more difficult to manage but I think we need that. Especially if I am expected to buy a license that supports the agency.