West End Guides Voluntarily Limit King Retention

From the Peninsula Daily News...

http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/articl...one-chinook-ask

OUTDOORS: West End guides commit to keeping just one chinook, ask anglers to do the same

By Michael Carman
Peninsula Daily News

A BROAD-BASED consortium of fishing guides, West End hospitality businesses and others in the sport fishing industry are pledging to take matters regarding chinook retention into their own hands.

The Olympic Peninsula Guides Association on Tuesday adopted an agreement to limit clients to the retention of one chinook during guided river fishing outings.

Members of the Northwest Olympic Peninsula Sport Fishing Coalition also are endorsing the move.

Association and coalition members also are putting their pledge out to guides that aren’t members of their groups, as well as recreational anglers, in a bid to bolster low chinook stocks on West End rivers ranging from the Clearwater, the Hoh and up to the Quillayute River system, which encompasses the Bogachiel, Dickey, Sol Duc and Calawah rivers.

A letter explaining the decision and a pledge form will be available at the Forks Thriftway/Forks Outfitters by this weekend and those who fish out west also can send a message to the association’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/opgaforks.

Current rules allow for recreational anglers to keep two adult chinook in season, and allow for a daily limit of six total salmon on the majority of these rivers.

Bob Kratzer, a member of the guide association and president of the coalition, says that members of the two groups feel this limit puts fish stocks in an unsustainable position and ultimately could cause widespread damage to chinook populations.

“Basically, I’ve been guiding out on these rivers for 30 years,” Kratzer said.

“We’ve seen a drastic decline in the fall king numbers. It’s just been going downhill for years.

“In about the past five years especially, we’ve been telling the state [Department of Fish and Wildlife] we are worried about them and that something needs to be done.”

It boils down, Kratzer said, that anglers don’t need to be taking this many chinook from population stocks that the experienced fishers know to be troubled.

“It’s a statement to the state that we are worried,” Kratzer said.

“We are seeing things that we think should require us to make proactive steps as a conservation measure to protect future fishing.

“If they [state fisheries managers] aren’t going to do anything about it, we have to.”

Guides who have already signed on include Bob Ball of Piscatorial Pursuits, Ryan Celusta of Ryan’s Guide Service, Randy Lato of All-Way Fishing, Bill Meyer of Rivers West Guide Service, Jim Kerr of Rain Coast Guides, Mike Zavadlov of Mike Z’s Guide Service, Greg Springer of Springers Sportfishing and Ryan Bullock, who didn’t list a guide service.

The list is still open and guides, businesses and individuals will all have a chance to sign on.

Kratzer said Fish and Wildlife will be notified in of the effort as well.

He feels customers will understand the self-imposed limitation, as many guides have already adopted a similar strategy and continually provide education on their concerns to customers.

“The majority of my clients really understand after I speak to them about the issues facing these rivers and these chinook,” Kratzer said.

“I’ve heard this from them a lot: ‘I’d rather know that I can bring my grandchildren here in 20 to 25 years and have this same outstanding experience than take my second king and go home with it now.’

“When I talk to our customers, when I talk to other guides, there are just not that many people who want to keep two kings a day.”

He said there has been buy-in from the Quileute tribe as well, with Kratzer saying the tribe has reduced the size of the mesh used during tribal harvesting and focused more on taking hatchery coho.

“They’ve gone to a mesh size that keeps more big kings in the river and they are targeting more hatchery cohos, since the state salmon hatchery raises 400,000 of them a year on the Sol Duc,” Kratzer said.

Kratzer, who also runs a guiding service in Alaska, feels the state fisheries managers should take lessons from king regulations in place on many rivers up in the Last Frontier.

“Many of those prime king rivers [like the Copper or Kenai] are one king per day, four per season limits,” he said.

When I spoke with him, Kratzer was out on a river trip with two customers from Oregon.

Those customers had seen a rebound in chinook stocks in the Tillamook Bay drainage after a similar five-king-a-year limit was imposed.

Another factor in this pledge is economic.

“There are many guides who see our resource as an experience, a destination experience that people who take a trip will remember forever,” Kratzer said.

“We haven’t seen another person on the river today. We are just floating along trying to catch fish and that’s what we can provide and we can promote.”

The complicated issue results in some pretty simple bottom line for Kratzer and the other guides.

“If we can reduce the numbers we kill, save these kings and still have a vital fishery, then the longevity of our town [Forks] will continue,” Kratzer said.

“I understand there are more people fishing and more licenses purchased, but that doesn’t make it OK to keep fishing them to extinction.”

*****************

Fish on...

Todd

P.S. Good on all of you who have signed the pledge!

Good for them. I haven't kept a King there in 12+ years. I've also been preaching it to the bank anglers for years, to the snaggers I argued with one day on the Sol Duc and with the Quilllayute Tribe kid snagging fish on the Sol Duc a few years ago.

This has been a topic of conversation on my trips over there with locals I visit with and with long time trekkers as well. Bring back the late 80's early 90's. Do what is needed.

Outstanding!

The Tillamook rivers that Bob recognized receive 10 times the pressure that the OP does. At first, many were against the reduced harvest. But over time, most have accepted it and recognize that if we are going to experience that fishery for years to come, it needs to be done.

Job well done by the OP Guides Association.

Kudos to the guides for organizing this. In many places the wild Fall Chinook are worse off than wild Steelhead. Why people want to bonk them is beyond me, imo they are not fit for eating the majority of the time, and are way more important hitting the gravel then freezer burned and tossed.

Always amazed at the dis-connect between the Dept. who rationalizes things on paper and those who are out on the water experiencing the declines first-hand.

How many watersheds have been "managed" with too-liberal bag limits only to be shut down years later? (wild winter steelhead anyone?). You'd think they get a clue by now.

Good move by the guides.

How is one better than none? If it were steelhead, most left on this board here would be screaming about a one fish kill being too much. Come on folks, if the returns for kings suggest severe over-harvest, what is the proper response? Hint: C&R. Those fish are not all that great dead anyway.

Change takes a long time, and this is a good step forward.

Milt is right, but a step like this is still a step in the right direction.

Mental gymnastics here rate a 10.0.

Many of us who have supported this don't kill too many to start with here ... the vast majority aren't very good table fare and with the quality of coho that return, it's easy to educate folks on working with smaller limits on them. In our boats, there probably won't be a drastic change, but it sends a message to the state that we feel we don't have to plunder stocks to death in order to work and we're hoping that it will open the eyes of a few that perhaps need to know a little more about these stocks that have been on what we feel to be a steady decline.

A great message to send Bob. Good on you guys!

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Out of curiosity, what's the typical escapement on the Duc. Had some incredible king days there the past few years and didn't know it was in trouble. I can only imagine how good it used to be! Glad to be educated!

It's a great start but I'm hoping for the day that everyone will have the balls to not keep ANY of them. I remind all of you that people pay thousands of dollars to travel to world fishing destinations to catch and release. Some may now say to me that it's never enough for guys like me but Bob himself said he's guided the Oly Pen for 30 years and has seen a huge decline in numbers. I've fished the Oly Pen for over 50 years and decline is putting it mildly. Very mildly! It's not just fall kings...it's everything!

As in this case guides should be leading the way to ultimately all catch and release. This can only help to insure their future business. After all, a guy takes his fish home shows it to a few people and that's the end of the story except for the picture of the fish. The picture is the true trophy. How many people have kept the fish and take the picture later in the day and the thing looks like a chum! Carefully taking the picture at the point of landing while it's in its best shape is optimal. The fish doesn't really need to be taken out of the water. Now you have your trophy and hopefully the released fish spread its genes and bolstered the population. I've caught many hundreds of salmon and steelhead at the very least and been fortunate enough to have fished "back in the day" and for those of you that are too young to relate and know only what is happening now....you have no idea what you missed and with the continued killing of these fish will always miss. I think we have a built in instinct to want to bonk a slab when we catch one...but we also have intelligence (most of us) and that intelligence should be telling us to stop being selfish and to band together once and for all and get this sh!t fixed. Bob you should be commended for what you're doing and I hope that someday with your influence you will lead the charge to total catch and release until it is fixed. If an old timer like me can do it anyone can do it.

Quileutes using reduced mesh size? Watched them pulling both their anchored nets and drift nets for 3 days this week with plenty of large kings, just saying.

Cool stuff..............now will the tribes participate????????????.Good luck,

SZ

Well I guess steelhead are completely different than spring chinook, so it makes it okay right?

No argument here.

Not to get too philosophical as that never works on PP but our Government was designed to be participatory. WE were supposed to be involved as voters, office holders, testifiers. The Government was US. Now, we have hunkered down in own little worlds as assume "they" will do what's right. Just how disorganized and in-fighting are the recs, the guides, and the communities that they support?

Not to mention wasting a bunch of people's money in donations thru change.org, funding their websites bills and advertising rather than the petitions cause...they figured that out during the taping of the recent FHN.

If you can't understand the 4 page agreement change.org has and get your ducks in a row, you have no business in the petitioners realm.

Never believed in private profiting from any public resource any way, any how!

"""Never believed in private profiting from any public resource any way, any how!"""

No doubt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, RUNnGUN, you make all your gear from scratch, including casting bullets and powder? And the list could go on.

Nope. Just sayin when you have a high demand finite public resource the public should reap the benefit over and above a private entity. To many natural resources have been abused because of the profit motive. Greed is there demise. And the list could go on.

Amen.