Future of Fishing is Selective

April is an important month for northwest salmon anglers. It is a month when the 2007-08 (May 1 through April 30, 2008) salmon seasons are set for the next 12 months. Those seasons apply to all of the ocean and inland marine waters, along with important fall river fisheries. The announcement will come on Friday, April 6th from the SeaTac Marriott, this year's site of the final negotiations between the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, northwest treaty tribes, commercial and recreational fishing leaders. To call this process frustrating is a gross understatement. From salmon conservation to "give me more fishing time," it's hard to find smiles on negotiators faces as the weeklong process concludes for another year. This will be my 25th year at the table and I would rather go to the dentist.

One of the bright lights for this upcoming season will be the expansion of selective fishing. Selective fishing is a fish management buzz word for targeting adipose fin-clipped hatchery chinook salmon which also requires the careful release of Chinook salmon bearing the natural adipose fin, a fatty fin located on the back of a salmon between the dorsal fin and the tail. These small adipose fins, serve no known biological purpose. However, when removed at a salmon hatchery facility early in a salmon's life cycle, they are a clear indicator to sport and commercial fishermen that indeed, the fish is the result of hatchery production. The absent fin can also provide important wild-fish spawning information on river gravel beds to biologists who monitor the straying of hatchery salmon attempting to spawn with naturally produced fish. Scientists shudder at the thought of a hatchery salmon attempting to spawn with a naturally produced salmon, fearing pollution of the wild salmon's genetics, and, that the progeny may qualify for a Poltergeist movie.

Now that you understand selective fishing, I anticipate expansion of selective fishing in Puget Sound for hatchery chinook salmon. Currently, the Everett area, for the second complete year of selective fishing for chinook salmon, remains open daily, from October 1 through April 30. The remainder of Puget Sound, San Juan Islands and the Strait of Juan de Fuca have some combination of a February and March opportunity. I believe, with strong conviction, that it is time to expand selective fishing. It is our future and it puts sport fishing back on the water with longer seasons without significant impacts on wild chinook salmon, primarily protected under the Endangered Species Act. Expansion of a few marine areas (north and central Puget Sound) has a price tag of nearly a half million dollars, which, according to my sources, has been secured by WDFW in concert with the legislature. The final approval must come from Puget Sound treaty tribes who have delivered strong challenges to selective fishing as it does not benefit their fishermen and it's pretty tough to release an ESA-protected chinook salmon from a gillnet.

My counsel to you, as a reader, is to vote "yes" for selective fishing, particularly if you believe in the future of sport salmon fishing in the northwest. It is a train that is coming to stations near you, and it has already arrived in areas such as the lower Columbia River (spring chinook and coho salmon), the ocean (coho salmon), the Strait of Juan de Fuca (summertime chinook and coho salmon) and the Everett area (fall, winter and spring chinook salmon).

Speaking of selective fishing, I recently returned from five consecutive days of blackmouth fishing in the San Juan Islands. The fishing was great. The catching was better. Two of us caught our limit of one each, every day, in Spring Pass and Rocky Bay. And, everyone of the chinook was a fin clipped hatchery fish. I feel good about that and I feel even better of having fresh chinook salmon to share with family and friends. I can only hope that the outstanding winter blackmouth fishery this year in Puget Sound will be reflected in good fishing this summer in inland waters.

Since April is a month with very limited salmon fishing opportunity, excluding the Everett area for blackmouth and the lower Columbia River for spring chinook fishing, I use the month to finalize my summer/fall fishing plans. I also think about upcoming lingcod and halibut seasons that get rolling in May. We'll take an in-depth look at lingcod fishing in next month's column as it remains one of my favorite fish, especially lightly breaded in Panko cooked quickly in light olive oil. Oh yeah, bring it on!

Finally, don't forget that the fishing license calendar year just rolled over beginning April 1st which also applies to shellfish.

See you on the water!

Tony Floor