Fishermen cheer talk of bigger catches

GRANTS PASS -- David Bitts does not expect to be able to make a living next year fishing for salmon.

But he hopes that restrictions on catching struggling stocks from the Klamath River can be eased a little bit, so salmon fishermen, fishing gear stores and ice suppliers can survive to better times.

"That basically means survival mode," Bitts said Thursday while fixing his crab pots in his yard along the Mad River outside Eureka, Calif.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council will vote in November on a proposal to ease restrictions on catching Klamath River fish. Restrictions nearly shut down West Coast salmon fishing this year.

If the council adopts a more flexible approach to protecting Klamath fall chinook that spawn in the wild, it will not have to make an emergency rule at the last minute to prevent salmon fishing from being completely shut down off Oregon and California as it did this year.

"This year was very painful," said Chuck Tracy, salmon biologist for the Portland-based council. "There was a lot of uncertainty. We didn't know if we would have a season or not. This was just an attempt to put some reliability into the process."

Minimizing the harvest

Salmon fishing seasons from Monterey Bay, Calif., to the Oregon-Washington border are set each year to minimize the harvest of Klamath River fall chinook, which have been struggling for years because of poor water quality, along with loss of habitat to irrigation, dams, logging and mining. As a result, ocean fishermen are not able to fully exploit plentiful stocks elsewhere, to avoid the possibility of injuring the Klamath population.

Under its salmon management plan, the council was faced this year with shutting down all salmon fishing -- sport and commercial -- along 700 miles of Oregon and California because fewer than 35,000 Klamath fall chinook returned to spawn in the wild for the third straight year.

The council adopted an emergency rule that allowed sportfishing to continue, along with drastically reduced commercial fishing from Cape Falcon in Oregon to Point Sur, Calif.

After finding that fishermen were landing only 12 percent of their normal harvest, losing $16 million, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez in August declared the West Coast salmon fishery a failure, opening the way for federal aid to fishermen and related businesses.

If the more flexible process is adopted, fishermen will know better what to expect in the coming year, Tracy said. The council is considering allowing between 5 percent and 13 percent more harvest on four-year-old Klamath fish, which account for the bulk of the annual returns, as measured by a computer model.

"Additional flexibility"

Scott Boley, a salmon fisherman and owner of a seafood market from Gold Beach and a former council member, said adopting the more flexible standard would help.

"It will not have any long-term adverse impacts on the stock," Boley said. "It does give you some additional flexibility to keep some fisheries going during this current crisis in the Klamath."

The Karuk Tribe, which harvests salmon after they swim up the Klamath River, opposes the change, said Craig Tucker, a spokesman.

"We think the current escapement (minimum of 35,000 fish) was established through good science," Tucker said. "We don't want to see fishermen punished. Because it's not overfishing that is the problem. But at the same time we can't fish below the floor or there won't be any fish in the future."