A BROAD-BASED consortium of fishing guides, West End hospitality businesses and others in the sport fishing industry are pledging to take matters regarding chinook retention into their own hands.
The Olympic Peninsula Guides Association on Tuesday adopted an agreement to limit clients to the retention of one chinook during guided river fishing outings.
Members of the Northwest Olympic Peninsula Sport Fishing Coalition also are endorsing the move.
Association and coalition members also are putting their pledge out to guides that aren’t members of their groups, as well as recreational anglers, in a bid to bolster low chinook stocks on West End rivers ranging from the Clearwater, the Hoh and up to the Quillayute River system, which encompasses the Bogachiel, Dickey, Sol Duc and Calawah rivers.
A letter explaining the decision and a pledge form will be available at the Forks Thriftway/Forks Outfitters by this weekend and those who fish out west also can send a message to the association’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/opgaforks.
Current rules allow for recreational anglers to keep two adult chinook in season, and allow for a daily limit of six total salmon on the majority of these rivers.
Bob Kratzer, a member of the guide association and president of the coalition, says that members of the two groups feel this limit puts fish stocks in an unsustainable position and ultimately could cause widespread damage to chinook populations.
“Basically, I’ve been guiding out on these rivers for 30 years,” Kratzer said.
“We’ve seen a drastic decline in the fall king numbers. It’s just been going downhill for years.
“In about the past five years especially, we’ve been telling the state [Department of Fish and Wildlife] we are worried about them and that something needs to be done.”
It boils down, Kratzer said, that anglers don’t need to be taking this many chinook from population stocks that the experienced fishers know to be troubled.
“It’s a statement to the state that we are worried,” Kratzer said.
“We are seeing things that we think should require us to make proactive steps as a conservation measure to protect future fishing.
“If they [state fisheries managers] aren’t going to do anything about it, we have to.”
Guides who have already signed on include Bob Ball of Piscatorial Pursuits, Ryan Celusta of Ryan’s Guide Service, Randy Lato of All-Way Fishing, Bill Meyer of Rivers West Guide Service, Jim Kerr of Rain Coast Guides, Mike Zavadlov of Mike Z’s Guide Service, Greg Springer of Springers Sportfishing and Ryan Bullock, who didn’t list a guide service.
The list is still open and guides, businesses and individuals will all have a chance to sign on.
Kratzer said Fish and Wildlife will be notified in of the effort as well.
He feels customers will understand the self-imposed limitation, as many guides have already adopted a similar strategy and continually provide education on their concerns to customers.
“The majority of my clients really understand after I speak to them about the issues facing these rivers and these chinook,” Kratzer said.
“I’ve heard this from them a lot: ‘I’d rather know that I can bring my grandchildren here in 20 to 25 years and have this same outstanding experience than take my second king and go home with it now.’
“When I talk to our customers, when I talk to other guides, there are just not that many people who want to keep two kings a day.”
He said there has been buy-in from the Quileute tribe as well, with Kratzer saying the tribe has reduced the size of the mesh used during tribal harvesting and focused more on taking hatchery coho.
“They’ve gone to a mesh size that keeps more big kings in the river and they are targeting more hatchery cohos, since the state salmon hatchery raises 400,000 of them a year on the Sol Duc,” Kratzer said.
Kratzer, who also runs a guiding service in Alaska, feels the state fisheries managers should take lessons from king regulations in place on many rivers up in the Last Frontier.
“Many of those prime king rivers [like the Copper or Kenai] are one king per day, four per season limits,” he said.
When I spoke with him, Kratzer was out on a river trip with two customers from Oregon.
Those customers had seen a rebound in chinook stocks in the Tillamook Bay drainage after a similar five-king-a-year limit was imposed.
Another factor in this pledge is economic.
“There are many guides who see our resource as an experience, a destination experience that people who take a trip will remember forever,” Kratzer said.
“We haven’t seen another person on the river today. We are just floating along trying to catch fish and that’s what we can provide and we can promote.”
The complicated issue results in some pretty simple bottom line for Kratzer and the other guides.
“If we can reduce the numbers we kill, save these kings and still have a vital fishery, then the longevity of our town [Forks] will continue,” Kratzer said.
“I understand there are more people fishing and more licenses purchased, but that doesn’t make it OK to keep fishing them to extinction.”
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Outdoors columnist Michael Carman appears here Thursdays and Fridays. He can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5152 or at mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com.