Salmon sport-fishing seasons face drastic cutbacks and closures leaving anglers disappointed with the outcome

Coho like this will be the focus of sport salmon anglers this summer and fall off the coast, Columbia River and in some Puget Sound areas although chinook are still in a rebuilding stage.

By NMTA staff

There's a big bump in the summer hatchery coho fisheries off the coast compared to last year, but Puget Sound anglers will be faced with some of the worst season cutbacks seen in a longtime.

“The sport-fishing community felt like it got gut punched in the process this year and for our neck of the woods (south-central Puget Sound Area 11) we roughly lost four to five months of fishing,” said Art Tachell, a WDFW Puget Sound recreational fishing advisor and manager of the Point Defiance Park Boathouse in Tacoma. “That’ll be a big chunk of our annual income and while I haven’t looked at the books really close it’ll be in the neighborhood of a $100,000 loss.”

Those decisions on salmon fishing seasons – developed by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), treaty tribal co-managers, federal fishery agencies and representatives from sport and commercial fishing sectors – culminated this past week during the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s (PFMC) meeting in Rohnert Park, California.

The season setting process termed “North of Falcon” (NOF) – a name that refers to Cape Falcon in northern Oregon, which marks the southern border of active management for Washington salmon stocks – begins in early March and was expected to be just another year of weak-stock salmon management focusing on strong hatchery chinook returns and minimizing the take of endangered wild chinook.

WDFW sport-fishery constituents went into the process expecting area closures and short seasons with intensive monitoring and the potential for in-season emergencies if actual returns do not match forecasts.

Sport fishing interests have become familiar with the need for annual adjustments to seasons required to meet conservation objectives for the perennially key weak wild chinook like the Stillaguamish, Nooksack and mid-Hood Canal stocks.

Participants in the NOF public involvement meetings have grown adept at understanding and working through the technical and political mechanisms of the yearly process but 2019 was different.

After five of the six weeks normally devoted to carefully viewing alternative seasons, analyzing the complex set of salmon stocks and fisheries being planned from Alaska to California, not even one Puget Sound sport-fishing season option had been laid out on the table for public review during the final NOF meeting in Lynnwood on April 3. Only about two hours was devoted to the Puget Sound sport salmon fisheries discussion.

WDFW was unable to provide such an alternative because they had agreed with their tribal co-managers to focus instead on Puget Sound chum issues that have virtually no effect on chinook and coho sport-fishing opportunities. This unplanned topic also averted WDFW from having any discussion of the serious issues potentially affecting fisheries with southern resident killer whales. All the vital public input on season preferences that reflect social and economic consequences of decisions was moved out of reach for most constituents to California.

“During this year’s (NOF) process the state and tribal co-managers spent many weeks talking about chum salmon which delayed the process of planning chinook fisheries within ESA driven exploitation rates,” said Carl Nyman, a WDFW Puget Sound recreational fishing advisor and President of the Charter Boat Association of Puget Sound. “Puget Sound chinook are always the most constraining species in the process and require more time to plan.”

Those who spent valuable time traveling to California arrived only to hear that WDFW decided to close places like the San Juan Islands (Marine Catch Area 7) during August which has the largest angler participation of a brief two-month summer salmon season. No discussion of alternative restrictions occurred prior to that decision like using the proven effective sport-fishing conservation tool of releasing wild chinook or only targeting abundant coho and pink returns. With final decisions made WDFW rationalized this draconian cut as having optimized angler opportunity throughout Puget Sound. Many ask where was the analysis during the public involvement process?

There was a handful of Puget Sound sport fishing interested citizens attending the California meeting where WDFW had meaningful conversation about alternative seasons other than the San Juan Islands.

However, providing creative and constructive input to WDFW over a matter of hours in a hotel backroom as agency leaders and staff are almost completely overwhelmed by continuous meetings with the co-managers was frustrating and unsatisfactory. The co-managers were apparently not interested in creative solutions to the problems, as WDFW reported frequently that proposals for alternative season structures might provide more sport opportunity were rejected as having an insufficient technical basis or that the co-managers didn’t have enough time for full review so late in the negotiations.

“I believe that the WDFW staff has the best intentions, has the best modeling team for predicting fisheries encounters and are some of the hardest workers I have seen,” said Nyman who has been a part of the process for 20 years. “But they do not have a good negotiation position and the co-managers have significantly out maneuvered us several years in a row.”

Frustration was evident within the WDFW delegation as the list of usual weak chinook stocks needing reduced impacts was augmented this year with the addition of Stillaguamish hatchery chinook and the complex of wild stocks from Lake Washington, and the Green and Puyallup rivers.

Objectives for those new weak stocks are part of the draft Puget Sound Chinook Harvest Management Plan (PSHMP) that is under consideration by WDFW and the Puget Sound tribal co-managers for submission later this spring to NOAA Fisheries as a long-term agreement.

Some of the new objectives of PSHMP clearly are not required for federal approval to allow fishing under the Endangered Species Act and may reflect allocation rather than conservation intentions. The WDFW Commission is expected to be involved with reviewing this draft plan prior to submission and may be influenced by the outcome of the 2019 NOF experience “test driving” these new stock objectives.

Difficulties for fishery managers to meet those management objectives to sport salmon fisheries in Puget Sound went from simply putting on a band-aid to a full-on compress to stop further bleeding.

Lost opportunity ranges from weeks to months closed but represents about half of the 2018 season for the most popular summer chinook salmon fisheries in San Juan Island, and northern, central south-central Puget Sound (Areas 7, 9, 10 and 11).

Cuts include closing all salmon fishing in the San Juan Islands (Area 7) in August and January; closing western Strait (5) for hatchery chinook for two weeks in February; closing eastern Strait (6) in February; closing east side of Whidbey Island (8-1 and 8-2) in December and January; delaying the northern Puget Sound (9) summer hatchery chinook fishery until July 25 (last year it began on July 16) plus a smaller quota of 3,044 compared to 5,400 in 2018 and closing fishing in January; central Puget Sound (10) summer hatchery chinook fishery opens July 25 but will likely be reduced by two to three weeks under a quota of 3,044 compared to 4,473 in 2018; and south-central Puget Sound (11) closed June 1-30 with a reduced quota of 2,800 hatchery chinook (5,030 in 2018) from July 1-Sept. 30 and closed Oct. 1 through Dec. 31.

Despite all the doom-and-gloom about the outcome there are some highlights for sport fisheries on the coast and a few other marine and freshwater locations.

“We came up with a plan for the mark coho fishery in Area 9 to flip it and make it non-select in October to expand more time on the water if the in-season numbers show it’s a possibility,” said Mark Baltzell, the WDFW Puget Sound recreational salmon manager.

Baltzell also says the Snohomish, Skykomish and Snoqualmie rivers are open Sept. 1-30 with a one coho daily limit. If the run is larger than predicted they could liberalize the season around the first week of October. This will be done through data collected in a test fishery.

In Puget Sound the total coho return for 2019 is 670,159 (416,319 hatchery and 253,840 wild), which is up from last year’s 557,149 (307,975 and 249,174).

The Puget Sound summer/fall chinook forecast is 246,837 (217,042 are of hatchery origin and 29,796 are wild) compared to 255,219 (227,815 and 27,404) in 2018.

WDFW and PFMC also developed a more liberal ocean salmon fishery for hatchery coho due to an expected higher return of Columbia River-bound fish while chinook is still in a recovery mode.

“We are very optimistic for coho and you have to go back to 2015 since we’ve had any good coho fishing,” said Wendy Beeghley, the WDFW head coastal salmon policy manager.

The total allowable ocean non-tribal commercial and sport catch is 190,000 hatchery coho, which is up considerably from 47,600 last year; and 52,500 chinook down slightly from 55,000 last year.

This is due to a large increase in the coho salmon returns to the Columbia River and coast — of 1,009,600 compared to a 2018 forecast of 349,000.

The 2019 prediction is made up largely of a robust 933,500 hatchery coho forecast. Of that 905,600 – 545,000 early-timed and 360,600 late-timed – are predicted to enter the Columbia River.

Along the Washington coast, the coho return forecast is 401,538 up dramatically from 270,756 in 2018. Willapa, Grays Harbor, Queets and Hoh are up from last year but the Quinault and Quillayute are down.

The Columbia River 2019 fall chinook forecast of 340,400 is better than the 2018 actual return of 290,900 but down from the preseason forecast of 365,600.

The ocean sport seasons are as follows:

• All four coastal ports – Neah Bay, La Push, Westport and Ilwaco – will be open daily from June 22 through Sept. 30 or close once each area’s catch quota is achieved.

• Ilwaco (Area 1) has a 79,800 hatchery coho quota (21,000 in 2018) and a 7,150 chinook quota (8,000 in 2018). Daily limit is two salmon and no more than one may be a chinook.

• Westport (Area 2) has a 59,050 hatchery coho quota (15,540) and a 12,700 chinook quota (13,100). Daily limit is two salmon and no more than one may be a chinook.

• La Push (Area 3) has a 4,050 hatchery coho (1,090) and a 1,100 chinook quota (1,500). Daily limit is two salmon. The bubble fishery will be open Oct. 1-13 with a 100 combined chinook and hatchery coho quota.

• Neah Bay (Area 4) has a 16,600 hatchery coho (5,370) and a 5,200 chinook quota (3,024). Daily limit is two salmon.

Other sport fisheries

• Baker Lake open for sockeye starting July 6 and a sockeye fishery on the Skagit River open June 16. The Baker Lake sockeye forecast is 33,737.

• Inner-Elliott Bay open for chinook on Aug. 2 to 12 p.m. on Aug. 5. Additional weekend openings are possible if in season data shows a stronger return.

• Hood Canal (Area 12) open in August, which is a month earlier than 2018, for coho fishing.

• East side of Whidbey Island (Area 8-2) open Aug. 16-Sept. 15 for hatchery coho from Mukilteo/Clinton line south and west to Marine Area 9 northern boundary. Area 8-1 is open for coho in October.

• Skagit River from Memorial Highway Bridge in Mount Vernon to Gilligan Creek) open for spring chinook from May 1-31. Stillaguamish River open Sept. 16-Nov. 15 for coho. Skykomish River open for hatchery chinook the Saturday before Memorial Day through July 31. Minter Creek open for salmon Sept. 15-Dec. 31.

• Buoy 10 open Aug. 1-20 for adult chinook and hatchery coho retention. Open from Aug. 21-Dec. 31 and release all chinook and wild coho.

To the north, Canada finally took measures in 2019 to protect poor chinook runs with many sport fishery restrictions in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, west coast of Vancouver Island and southern Strait of Georgia. Also noted is an extreme conservation status for spring and summer Fraser River chinook. Here is the link from Fisheries and Oceans Canada with details https://www.canada.ca/en/fisheries-oceans/news/2019/04/government-of-canada-takes-action-to-address-fraser-river-chinook-decline.html?fbclid=IwAR3rJZWrXrV3v3R3rQJeUGQ7PAAWifUP1AuNU4lakkr2_SVxA4zl-Ej3qWw. There was also a story posted in the Vancouver Sun at https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/fraser-river-chinook-fishery-closed-through-most-of-the-summer?fbclid=IwAR1pTsOPrNuQHGURDDZe5IbfUME78oNRhrvqY4K09EMZh9wHgIj4rrzGFB4.

For more information on this year’s Washington salmon fisheries, visit WDFW’s webpage at http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/northfalcon/. To view the Northwest Indian Fisheries Council news release, go to https://nwifc.org/.