The keeping of only fin-clipped hatchery fish — long the norm for Columbia River spring chinook, coho and steelhead — is looming for summer and fall chinook, too.
Washington and Oregon officials met this week with sport and commercial fishing representatives and much of the talk dealt with “mark-selective fisheries,’’ the buzz term for keeping hatchery fish marked with a missing adipose fin while released wild fish.
While nothing is adopted yet, switching to mark-selective fisheries cropped up again and again.
To wit:
• The Pacific Fishery Management Council has adopted its preliminary options for ocean salmon season off the Washington, Oregon and California coasts for 2010. A hatchery-only chinook season beginning June 19 and continuing until 19,000 chinook or June 30 is among the options.
Whether the PFMC adopts the hatchery-only chinook season when it sets the final ocean regulations in April remains to be seen. But Pat Pattillo of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife said the agency would like to demonstrate a hatchery-only chinook season will work in the the ocean.
Sportsmen in the ocean have been limited to hatchery coho only for more than a decade.
Pattillo said the hatchery-fish-only rule would maximize the harvest of hatchery chinook and be proven if future restrictions on wild chinook catch get even more stringent.
Chinook retention at Buoy 10 this year is modeled to begin Aug. 1 and end Aug. 29 under the most liberal scenario. Any chinook could be kept.
Butch Smith, president of the Ilwaco Charter Association, asked the state to consider allowing a bag limit of two or three hatchery coho, plus retention of a hatchery chinook, from Aug. 29 through Labor Day.
“If people can catch a chinook, at least through Labor Day, maybe they’ll stay at the coast through the holiday and not leave early,’’ Smith said.
Hatchery-only rules farther up the Columbia are less likely. The fall catch in the Longview-Vancouver area is mostly “upriver bright’’ fall chinook, a wild stock and the healthiest in the river.
• By no later than 2012, anglers will have to release wild summer chinook, which pass through the lower Columbia between June 16 and July 31. The run is considered healthy and not listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Construction will start on a new hatchery in the upper Columbia River this year, with broodstock taken for the new facility beginning in 2012.
Bill Tweit of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, said only wild summer chinook will be used to stock the hatchery from 2012 through 2015.
As many wild fish as possible are needed to reach the spawning streams to minimize the effect of taking wild summer chinook out of the Okanogan River for use in the new hatchery, so only hatchery-origin fish will be allowed to be caught, he said.
With a big run of 88,800 summer chinook forecast to the enter the Columbia this year, it may be possible to have a sport season lasting almost the entire six-week duration of the run if a mark-selective season is adopted, said Cindy LeFleur of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
• Washington is considering limiting fall chinook retention in lower Columbia River tributaries to only hatchery fish.
Among the streams involved are the Grays, Cowlitz, Toutle, Washougal, Wind, White Salmon rivers, plus Drano Lake.
