Washington and Oregon officials on Tuesday adopted commercial salmon fishing seasons in late August and September for six beach seiners and four purse seiners in selected portions of the lower Columbia River.
This will be the second year of commercial seine fisheries to test the methods in the lower Columbia.
Eight commercial fishermen applied for seine permits in June and all were awarded a permit, said Robin Ehlke, assistant Columbia River policy coordinator for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Only six of the eight permits (four beach and two purse) were purchased. The states are accepting applications in order to fill two remaining beach seine permits and two purse seine permits.
Individual catch quotas have been assigned to each permit. The quotas are determined based on the overall harvest allocated to seine fisheries.
The six beach seiners each are allowed 400 adult chinook kept, 150 adult coho kept and 180 steelhead handled. The four purse seiners have individual quotas of 650 adult chinook kept, 200 adult coho kept and 150 steelhead handled.
Jeff Whisler of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said those quotas are hard-caps, meaning if any of the three numbers is reached the seiner is done for the day and season.
The seiners will be allowed to fish daylight hours on Aug. 24, Aug. 26, Aug. 31-Sept. 4, Sept. 8-10, Sept. 14, Sept. 16, Sept. 21, Sept. 23, Sept. 28 and Sept. 30. Seining will be limited to the Wahkiakum and Cowlitz county portions of the Columbia through Aug. 26.
Beginning Aug. 31, seining also will be allowed in the Clark County portion of the Columbia from the Clark-Skamania line downstream to river mile 90.25, which is about mid-way on Bachelor Island.
Ehlke said most of the seiners are interested in the Clark County portion of the Columbia.
To oversimply, seines are nets that surround the fish, then corral them while alive.
Ehlke said hand sorting or use of a knotless dip net when sorting is required. Sorting time is limited to 75 minutes. Observers are mandatory for each seiner whenever fishing.
Only fin-clipped chinook and coho can be kept. Any salmon legal to be retained must be kept.
The Columbia River Technical Advisory Committee has determined that 33 percent of chinook, 38 percent of coho and 5 percent of steelhead released from beach seines will die. The biologists have set the mortality rates for released fish from purse seines at 21 percent for chinook, 29 percent for coho and 2 percent for steelhead.
A year ago, the commercials in the seine season averaged $1.49 for chinook and $1.15 for coho.
Gillnet fishing currently is under way three nights a week through Aug. 28 upstream of the mouth of the Lewis River. More gillnetting is planned beginning the week of Sept. 14 upstream of the Lewis River. Gillnetting for coho is expected throughout October downstream of the Lewis River.
