Olympic Peninsula: C&R only?

[Lee]

"strong right wing"  I don't see that.  I see Self-Centered Attention Wh***.


She is definitely entertaining though.

[Canceled]

I'm not about to pop support for anyone who has given themself the name of "fishingoddess" no matter what the cause.  Comes off as somewhat of an attention (insert your 5 letter word of choice here).

I was going to use that name but it was taken, pdxfisher was my second choice

[polepole]

I'm not about to pop support for anyone who has given themself the name of "fishingoddess" no matter what the cause.  Comes off as somewhat of an attention (insert your 5 letter word of choice here).

I was going to use that name but it was taken, pdxfisher was my second choice

Fixed it for you.

-Allen

[Lee]

Fixed it for you.

-Allen

HAHHAAHAHHAAHHAAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!

[Canceled]

You made me snort out loud Allen (he changed my displayed name to pdxGoddess). Do I need to go out and buy myself a spray skirt now that goes with my wading boots and tackle bag

[PNW]

Shoulda put a comma in there. For a$$hat purposes: She's obliviously.. i mean obviously right wing, obviously strong willed & opinionated, & physically strong (for a girl). As for the C&R only crowd... I'd like to sic the dogs on them. Want to "protect" a river from over fishing? Then close it to fishing. I'll C&R when required by law or rules for a game. If a place is C&R only, I don't fish there. When I'm done catching fish for the table, I stop fishing for the day. C&R stresses & sometimes kills fish & isn't much more than an ego stroke for yuppies who want feel all l.l.bean outdoorsy, imo.

[flyfishingblake]

I would say that the issue of C&R is not as simple as one would think. In some watersheds, for example backcountry lakes, it is many times healthy to keep trout (particularly brook trout), as they can overpopulate a watershed with a limited food base.

Now, the Yakima River on the other hand, gets pounded on. There can be as many as 40 guide boats on that river in a day. That's 80 people fishing with someone who knows what they are doing and is coaching them. Plus you get other people out there fishing and you can have realistically 100 people fishing that place every day all Summer into Fall. On a hot day of fishing a boat with two anglers can catch and release 50 trout. Some trout die from being caught and released, it's true. But the impact on these fish is less with C&R regulations than without. If C&R was not a regulation on the Yakima River it would be done.

In regards to salmon, I occasionally kill wild salmon. But I only do it in rivers where there is strong runs and when I believe it is a sustainable decision. With that said, I do a significant amount of fishing in Puget Sound. I release every wild coho I catch, even when the regulations allow retention. I do not believe that keeping a wild coho in Puget Sound is ever a sustainable decision in light of the circumstances of fish runs in Puget Sound.

Okay, now steelhead. They have similar attributes and somewhat similar life cycles to salmon(or so it seems to many).  Steelhead are not salmon. They do not spawn like salmon, they do not produce like salmon, and they do not colonize like salmon. I think there is a much larger impact killing a wild steelhead than a wild salmon. Especially with the possibility of steelhead being repeat spawners, it is important to release all wild steelhead, especially hens. If a hen returns a second time to spawn, many times she doesn't weigh much more than she did the first time (surprisingly), but the egg production is through the roof. The scientific facts of C&R are irrefutable and have been argued over every fishing forum on the planet and fill shelves of books.

So here's my $.02. If all you're going to do is kill fish because you think it's your right, and you're not going to consider the big picture and how sustainable your choices are, and if you're not leaving this resource for future generations then you're no better than the natives that rape the rivers with their nets because "it's their right." We need to look at the big picture here and really think this through. I say all this as one with skin in the game, my livelihood is dependent on sustainable runs of local fish. And when it comes down to wild steelhead on the Olympic Peninsula (back to the original topic of this thread) this is a huge issue. This economically impacts a lot of people including myself. This impacts the town of Forks. If the steelhead runs continue their downward trend that town and others are going to suffer big time.  Over the last several years I have raised thousands of dollars for the Wild Steelhead Coalition and have gotten to know a lot of the fly fishers and gear fishers that care about steelhead and I can assure you it is not about an ego stroke for yuppies. A**hole yuppies only care about themselves and don't care about the resource.
If any of you are around Gig Harbor, WA and want to support wild steelhead, we're hosting the Fly Fishing Film Tour next Wednesday night at 6:30pm. The event benefits the Wild Steelhead Coalition, come out and support!

[polepole]

C&R fisheries are but another form of fisheries management that has an affect of maximizing angling experience.  The intent is to manage knowing full well (or at least attempting to know full well) the impact (mortality) on the fisheries.  It's a tradeoff.  You can have a harvest season (with limits in take and size and open periods) with the goal of taking X fish, or you can have a CNR fishery with a goals of having an incidental mortality that results in X fish dying, or as some organization push it, you can have closed areas. (MPAs)   Or you can have a combination an open harvest season, a CNR season, and closed areas, but the end result is X fish dying.  Voluntary CNR has the effect of extending the open season, but does it really reduce the allocation of fish dying?  Same question for MPAs.

The bigger question in my mind is whether the target harvest levels are sufficient to maintain a quality fishery.  What is the definition of a quality fishery?  Hmmm ...

-Allen

[ConeHeadMuddler]

Thanks for that Blake. You said it better than I would have, and you were a lot more civil than i would have been. Myself, I thought that mean spirited rant of pnw's wasn't even worthy of a reply.

[Lee]

Myself, I thought that mean spirited rant of pnw's wasn't even worthy of a reply.

PNW is a subsistance fisher.  Catch and release is for sport and guide fishing.  I think his viewpoint is extremely relevent, then again, I too only target fish I'll actually put in my belly, so perhaps I'm biased.  Fishing with the sole intention of catch and release is an offensive practice to some of us.

The only fish I ever release are:  Dogfish, Sculpin, anything I hook that isn't legal to keep.  I don't think it's a good idea to intentionally go out and hook a fragile trout in the face, fight it for 15 minutes on 2lb test line, and then release it "unharmed". 

Then again, some people find that sort of thing fun, like the personality outlined in this article See # 14

Now that was just mean huh?

Try to be a little nicer when passing judgement on others next time.   

[fishnut]

!@#$%^&*()_+!

[doughboy]

We need to be thinking conservation and stewardship, not preservation. The preservationist CNR for Chum Salmon here in Oregon has done great things,I heard a fisherman caught one this season. In Oregon we used to have an eight fish limit. Finally Oregon is getting eggs from Washington to start stocking Chum on this side of the Columbia. If you want better fishing start collecting wild fish spawn them in a bucket,fertilization success 90-95% compared to stream fertilization of 3-5%, and place fertilizide eggs in egg boxes to hatch in the stream were parent fish were caught. In five years you will have to take fish home for dinner so there is room in the river for your fishing line. The Trask river is a good example of hatch baxes and the supply of wild fish. Last fall I hooked an average of four fish a day and kept one bright fish every day for four days. So if you want good fishing it should be hands on not hands off and if we

[Kenai_guy]

I think we can all agree that everyone has a different opinion on C&R fishing.  Personally, I love fishing (& hunting) with the purpose of taking home meat for the freezer.  I've only bought meat from the store when I wanted something different a handful of times because of my success in the outdoors over the last 8 years.  With that being said.... I never take more than I can eat, and the few times I harvested more than I needed, the excess was given to those who needed it more than myself. So, I'm a big fan of eating what I catch.

Now, catch and release.  I'm no biologist, but I have to believe any population of fish that is under a C&R regulation can see a certain amount of stress from being targeted more frequently and handled more often.  There are inherent risks because of this activity: illness and death.  The question is... Does the overall population suffer more from people fishing until they fill the daily limit or fishing all day just for fun?  I don't know.

All I can ask of anyone that uses the outdoor resources is to help protect the habitat, responsibly manage the resource so it will be ther forever, and enjoy yourself. 

[polepole]

Does the overall population suffer more from people fishing until they fill the daily limit or fishing all day just for fun?  I don't know.

Well, therein lies the catch.  Fisheries that have catch and take regulation typically have a population that can take the higher impacts associate with a catch and take fishery.  Again, it's just another means of reducing the impacts on a given population.

Look at it another way, and this time using Blake's example of the Yakima fishery.  There are multiple ways to meet the same goal.  Let's say there is a mortality rate of 4% (arbitrary number chosen for the sake of argument) for CNR.  At 50 trout caught per fisherman per day, a fisherman is effectively killing 2 fish per day.  Or you could have a catch and take fishery with a limit of 2.  If the same amount of fishermen participate in this fishery, which is worse?  Well, some would argue that the CNR fishery offers a better experience because I got to catch 50 fish.

Of course this example is simplistic and there are many other variable that come into play.  Let's say the catch and take fisherman caught 25 fish before keeping 2.  With the 4% mortality rate, this fisherman effectively killed 3 fish.  With the same amount of fishermen, the harvest is higher.  Well, I know that a lot of people do not participate in CNR fisheries because they are meat fishermen.  Let's say a catch and take fishery drew 2X the number of fishermen than a CNR fishery would have drawn.  Well then there would effectively be 3X the number of fish harvested.  So what to do?  Well, reduce the season to 4 months out of the year.

So now you have 2 examples of meeting same goal.  Manage a CNR fishery that is open all year.  Or manage a catch and take fishery that is open for only 4 months.  In this example, both have the same impact on the fishery.

-Allen

[ConeHeadMuddler]

... isn't much more than an ego stroke for yuppies who want feel all l.l.bean outdoorsy, imo.

I consider this blanket generalization to be narrow, asinine, ignorant, and (again) mean-spirited. I do all kinds of fishing in all kinds of places, and I don't even begin to fit into that category as described by pnw. Normally, I do not let myself get insulted by such statements, but I can only stomach so much crap.

I use light wire barbless hooks for trout, rarely make them pose, rarely take them out of the water when I'm releasing them, use heavy enough leader to get 'em in quickly, and I know what I'm doing when I'm doing it. Also, I quit C&R fishing for trout in lakes when the temp surpasses 65 F since they get stressed out.

Here's my insult: Don't get me going on idiots who like to fish for trout with power bait.

I kill and eat a lot of fish, but never wild steelhead. I eat very few cutthroat, and if I do keep one, its usually one that was hooked in the gills or eye. Same thing when lake fishing. I usually only keep one or two trout for the table. I'd rather eat rockfish, greenling, ling cod, crab, razor clams, and salmon. Last time I hit the lake, I kept three hatchery trout, but that was unusual.