Rayburn "Punch" Guerin talks to a friend (out of the photo) about salmon issues Thursday afternoon in Charleston aboard his troller, F/V Frankie. Guerin, president of the Oregon Trollers Association, discussed the organization's work with the Klamath Water Users Association and a lawsuit that was filed Friday in Eugene. World Photo by Susan Chambers

By Susan Chambers, Staff Writer

CHARLESTON - Even though the first half of the South Coast commercial salmon season has ended for the summer, the political and legal wrangling is just beginning.

On Friday, the Charleston-based Oregon Trollers Association and other salmon fishermen and organizations, through the Pacific Legal Foundation and Oregonians in Action, filed a lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service in U.S. District Court in Eugene.

It's salmon redux: This time the case is about Chinook instead of coho, fish on the Klamath River in California instead of the Alsea River in Oregon. But the central argument is the same: The federal government didn't count hatchery fish along with naturally spawning fish when it set 2005 salmon seasons.

"While the ocean is teeming with salmon, the government is telling these people they can't fish," Russ Brooks, PLF attorney, said Friday.

Trollers association president Rayburn "Punch" Guerin said he sees the fish when he's on the ocean and said he knows there are more Chinook, just out of reach.

"We've just had a bellyful of this stuff," Guerin said Thursday aboard his boat, the F/V Frankie, in Charleston. "The federal entities managing that system think they're above the law."

It's a complex situation, with overlapping issues much like the scales on a Chinook.

"I don't know what can be done about it," Don Stevens, chairman of the salmon advisory panel for the Pacific Fishery Management Council, said Friday. "We need more water and I don't know if we can get it from the Klamath farmers or not. (The water) has been over-allocated for many, many years."

Guerin peeks out from below the brim of his Oregon Trollers Association cap and looks around at the other trollers in the boat basin. He can recite from memory most of the history surrounding salmon issues on the South Coast. He's fished, he's argued; now he's just plain frustrated.

"There are so many areas where the government is trying to micromanage our lives. People can't work," Guerin said Thursday.

Fishery managers closed much of the salmon season this year to southern Oregon and northern California fishermen to allow more fish to return to the Klamath River to spawn. The problem, managers said, is that there may be too few fish returning to ensure Chinook repopulation on the Klamath River system.

But, the trollers argue, the managers don't count the hatchery fish, those that are spawned and raised in captivity before being released to the wild to grow. They consider only the natural spawning fish, the trollers and the attorneys say.

While most rivers in Washington, Oregon and California are experiencing adequate, if not strong, returns of fish, the Klamath is a weak spot on the coast. Good ocean conditions are helping most salmon populations, but the in-river situation on the Klamath cannot be overcome strictly by a productive ocean, critics argue.

Even if the trollers win the lawsuit, Stevens said, it's unlikely things will change for this year or maybe even next year. Any change to ocean salmon management has to be done through the process of passing an amendment to the fishery plan.

However, other things could have been done, Guerin said, to prevent the fish kills a few years ago that are causing the current restrictions.

Many of the Chinook suffered from parasites in some sections of the Klamath and Trinity rivers in recent years and those fish could have been trucked downriver to colder water, Guerin said. The managers don't consider the stray factor, either, he said, noting that some fish from other rivers will return to the Klamath instead of their own. Mother Nature will ensure enough fish return to the Klamath system to allow the salmon population to survive, he said.

But can managers depend on that? Does the introduction of human changes to the river system play any part in the complex association between fish and habitat?

That's the root of the problem, said Glen Spain, northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.

The Klamath River system water is grossly overappropriated, to farmers, to fishermen, to refuges, and more. Water diverted from the river and its tributaries often results in low water levels and warmer water that stresses the fish.

Only more water in the river can change the situation of dying fish in the spring and fall, Spain said Friday.

"If PLF really wants to help fishermen, they should help us fight for more water so more fish survive in the Klamath, not oppose that as they have in other cases," Spain said. "They're doing fishermen no good in the long run if they oppose putting enough water in the river."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.