The decades-long fight between sport and commercial fishermen over salmon management and allocation in the Columbia River resumes in earnest Saturday in Olympia before the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission.
The nine-member panel has scheduled a staff report and public hearing — tentatively slated to begin at 10:15 a.m. — regarding a sweeping package of Columbia River reforms adopted four years ago with full implementation slated in January.
The meeting will be in Room No. 172 of the Natural Resources Building, 1111 Washington St. S.E.
Reforms adopted by both states in early 2013 allocated more chinook salmon to sportsmen in the main Columbia and restricted gillnetting to off-channel sites like Youngs Bay near Astoria.
The reforms also called for commercial fishing that remained in the main Columbia to be done with live-capture methods — such as purse seines and beach seines — designed to harvest hatchery stocks and release wild fish.
However, testing of beach and purse seines in the main Columbia have found much higher mortality rates of released fish than anticipated four years ago.
Washington commission members met last week to whittle down for Saturday’s hearing some of the issues on which they’d like to get comment.
Among them:
• Should spring chinook allocation stay at 70 percent sport/30 percent commercial or shift to 80 percent sport/20 percent commercial?
• Should commercial fishing, with gear other than gillnets, be allowed in the lower Columbia for spring chinook after the mid-May run size update?
• Should commercial fishing for summer chinook be allowed in the main lower Columbia if an alternative gear to gillnets can be found, and should the allocation be 70 percent sports/30 percent commercial or 80 percent sport/20 percent commercial?
• Should the use of gillnets continue to be allowed for fall chinook between the Lewis River and Beacon Rock if necessary to achieve economic assurances given to the commercial fleet in 2012? And should the sharing be 70/30 favoring sportsmen or 80/20?
Several Washington commission members raised questions or made statements at their conference call last week.
Commissioner Dave Graybill of Leavenworth said spring chinook escapement into the upper Columbia watershed is a concern, mentioning fisheries in the Yakima, Wenatchee and Snake rivers.
Graybill added that all summer chinook in the Columbia originate upstream of Priest Rapids Dam and that several north-central Washington tributaries are not reaching spawning goals.
He also said he is very uncomfortable guaranteeing income to user groups through fish management policies, be they commercials, sport-fishing guides or lodges.
Commissioner Jay Kehne of Omak asked if seines are really a feasible commercial harvest method, given the high mortality rates of wild fish released from seines.
Jim Scott of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife said commercial summer chinook harvest is particularly challenging due to the abundance of sockeye salmon in the Columbia River at the same time and the very low allowance of sockeye as an incidental catch.
Commission member Larry Carpenter of Mount Vernon said the states need to “try a formula that works for everybody.’’
“No one is going to fish for salmon in a meaningful way in the future unless they can fish selectively (keep hatchery fish, release wild ones),’’ Carpenter said. “That’s where we have to go.’’
