OLYMPIA — Washington salmon and steelhead fishermen will not be required to use barbless hooks in the Columbia River beginning Jan. 1.
Phil Anderson, state fish and wildlife director, said Friday he will issue an emergency rule rescinding the barbless hook regulation scheduled to debut in 2011 to avoid Washington and Oregon having conflicting rules.
In February, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission adopted a package of sport-fishing regulations that included requiring barbless hooks for salmon and steelhead starting in January between the ocean and McNary Dam.
Anderson said the hope was Oregon would adopt a matching rule. Barbless hooks make the release of wild fish easier and are believed to improve fish survival from handling.
But the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission in August adopted 2011 regulations without the barbless hook rule.
“We will continue to pursue it, but we think the downsides of having dissimilar regulations in the river and the potential enforcement difficulties that will result and putting our anglers under a different set of regulations warrants stepping back from this,” Anderson said.
The Washington-Oregon boundary in the Columbia is hard to define.
“The line varies where you are on the river,” he said. “If you are down near the mouth, the Washington border is just about on the tide flats at low tide and 90 percent of the river is in Oregon. As you move upriver, that line changes….It’s not down the middle of the river necessarily.”
Anglers are subject to the rules of the state where they bought their fishing license.
If four anglers are in a boat, and two had Oregon licenses and two had Washington licenses, the barbless hook rule would apply to the Washington licenses but not the Oregon licenses, Anderson said.
Commission member David Jennings of Olympia said he feels like Washington is being held hostage by Oregon.
“Because Oregon says ‘no’ we can’t go forward with our conservation efforts,” Jennings said.
Anderson said Washington will continue to advocate for barbless hooks.
“We’re going to encourage all anglers to use barbless hooks even though we don’t have a regulation, as well as other means of improving release mortality (like) using knotless nets,” he said. “All of those kinds of techniques we are going to call attention to.”
