Mountains & Rivers: Salmon Season
June 23, 2009
By Norm Klobetanz
It’s a cliché, but again the other day a local fisherman and I commiserated over the complexities of Idaho’s fish and game regulations. We updated the old complaint by saying that a GPS was needed (instead of a map), but we still fell back on the old idea that one also needed to be a lawyer to interpret Idaho Fish and Game Regulations. Salmon season was changing and new regs. were going into effect.
Admittedly the salmon season is a tough one to regulate. The season’s openings, closings, locations, and catch limits need to be flexible because of the unpredictable contingencies of the salmon run into Idaho. Heck, I’m surprised they kept such a liberal season considering the runs have not come up near what they have predicted. They have to carefully count the wild and hatchery fish caught so as to comply with the numbers of fish allowed to Idaho sport anglers. The Nez Perce Indians get a share, and the hatcheries need to get enough to fill their incubators with another generation of fertilized fish eggs. The Fish and Game hire people to set up stations to measure and count the salmon caught and kept. Also a certain percentage of wild fish are caught. If the “take” limit on wild fish is reached the season must close. Even though anglers release wild fish because they are a federally listed threatened species, the Feds claim that a certain percentage will die and thus the “take” concept. The Feds allow sport anglers to in effect accidentally kill some wild fish (You can’t keep any no matter what! All must be released.), but when that certain parentage of wild fish caught and released is reached, the fishing is shut down. The fish are counted via a window in the fish ladder in the last dam on the Snake River before the fish enter Idaho to determine the numbers of hatchery and wild fish “take” available to Idaho anglers.
I have to admit, and I do so hesitantly because controversy is not what I am after, but I have witnessed steelhead and salmon anglers miss-handle wild fish. Many are handled too harshly. I think it is more ignorance than malice or disdain, but it is not that hard to net or not net wild fish and carefully handle and release them. All that is needed is a little coaching. It just dawned on me! I should make a proposal to the Fish and Game that they contract me to produce a video for their web site that demonstrates how to carefully catch and release salmon and steelhead. It can’t hurt to make the pitch.
The salmon and steelhead runs into Idaho are a wonderful story and a controversial one since the dam building occurred on the Columbia, Snake, and North Fork of the Clearwater Rivers. Our local salmon hatchery is five miles south from Riggins. It is located on Rapid River (a tributary of the Little Salmon) and is funded by the Idaho Power company as mitigation for building Hells Canyon Dam. (A customer once asked a river guide while traveling to the launch site below the dam what the water was like after they took the electricity out of it. No fooling.) Idaho Power promised to build fish ladders for the fish to get over the dam, but the ladders never worked properly. The dam ended all migration of fish up the Snake River at that point. So we got the Rapid River Hatchery as recompense.
Most of the fish caught locally around Riggins on the main river and on the Little Salmon are from that hatchery. I have some good video of them capturing, spawning, and clipping fins at the trap and hatchery. Hatchery fish have their adipose fins clipped in the hatchery when they are small fry (pun intended, actually they may be called a parr at this stage). In any case they are clipped before they are released at about one year old to try and make the trip to the ocean. On this journey they become what are called smolts and transform into a salt water ocean fish. Typically a year to three years later, survivors return as much larger adults to migrate back to where they were hatched. A clipped adipose signals a hatchery fish and can be legally kept.
The Salmon River in Idaho supports several runs of wild Pacific salmon. There are a few fall Chinook that spawn in the main stem of the lower Salmon and a very few sockeye salmon or red salmon (all Pacific salmon have at least two names) that migrate to Redfish Lake near Stanley, Idaho. Then we have the spring/summer Chinook (Chinook are also called kings) that this article is about. Spring Chinook climb the Salmon River to spawn in side streams and head waters.
These adult fish (plus jacks—immature fish under 24 inches) enter the Columbia River from the ocean in the spring (some in the summer) and migrate through five dams and reservoirs, turn up the Snake River and navigate three more dams with fish ladders, then enter Idaho. Salmon River fish continue up the Snake from Lewiston, Idaho. Forty miles up river, these fish then turn up the Salmon and begin climbing into the backcountry mountains to where they were hatched several years before and now where they spawn in August or September. Some fish travel more than 900 miles from the ocean and climb over 6,000 feet in elevation. They quit feeding upon entering fresh water and loose a full third of their body weight. The rigors of migrating, spawning, and developing mature eggs and milt ravage the bodies and the fish die, hopefully after successfully depositing and fertilizing eggs in a gravel redd or nest dug by the female. The nest is most likely near the very spot she was hatched four years previously. Apparently the sense of smell (and taste and memory?) leads these fish with tiny brains back to these cool mountain streams.
It is estimated that less than 1% of Idaho smolts survive to spawn as adults. It is usually the out migration when they are small perhaps six inches long when most die. Adults handle the return migration much better. Many scientists claim that the eight dams they must migrate out through is the largest reason for the decline in salmon. I have been told by old timers that when the last few dams went in during the 1960’s it was like the proverbial straw that broke the back, the wild runs plummeted and hatcheries hustled to stop the bleeding. Many feel, and I am certainly one, that hatchery fish are nice, but they can’t replace the wild fish. Wild fish have more genetic diversity. The hatchery fish are in-bread and are not as resistant to disease. Wild fish are much more diverse in migrating habits and can more easily overcome a calamity like a Mt. Saint Helens or nasty disease. They are more robust and get “fine tuned” in an evolutionary sense to make that specific long migration to that specific remote wilderness stream to do its thing and die. Its rotting carcass then puts nutrients from the Pacific Ocean into the bio system fertilizing the whole mountain community.
I have been asked more than once by fishing clients while guiding them, what my view was on the dam controversy. Many fish advocates want to take out the three lower Snake River dams to save Idaho anadramous fish runs. My answer typically is that I don’t think we as a society have the will to take the dams out except perhaps way down the road when they are worn out and not needed as much. I propose we keep improving and implementing other things to save the runs. I include with this buying out commercial fishing rights, habitat improvement, appropriate predator controls, water flushes, dam structural and other similar improvements. According to recent polls most people in the Northwest are against taking the three dams out. Many think it would be too expensive and too hard on the economy, etc. Fish advocates have been working on the long term economic angle touting the financial benefits of a robust anadromous fish run, etc. Salmon and steelhead used to run through downtown Boise; can you imagine if that were the case now. (They truck extra hatchery steelhead there now for a weird put and take fishery.) Intact wild country and good salmon and steelhead runs, in my opinion, would be a very valuable commodity a hundred years from now. In any case that is my bias. I live here because of the mountains and rivers and the animals and fish therein.
If regulated right, sport fishing for these fish is sustainable and will not destroy or harm the run. After today all fishing for salmon this season will close from just below Hammer Creek on the main-stem Salmon up river to the mouth of Short Creek. Also the Little Salmon will close. However, from the mouth of Short Creek up to the upper boat ramp at Vinegar Creek will open until the end of fishing (an hour after sunset) on June 28th. Fishing on the entire Little Salmon is closing at the end of the day today. What the catch limit on the stretch from Short Creek to Vinegar Creek will be, I am not sure. I haven’t figured it out yet—I’ve got the regs. up on the computer.
Sorry, but I am going to do it—please skip what follows if you want; I am going to give this season’s catch and possession regulations for salmon for our area. If you want please skip a head and take my word that these regs. are tedious and—well, see again the first paragraph of this article. For much of the season the “daily limit was 4 salmon (no more than 2 may be greater than or equal to 24 inches total length) per day. Anglers must cease fishing for salmon for the day when they retain 4 salmon or 2 salmon greater than 24 inches total length, whichever comes first. After opening day the possession limit is 12 salmon (no more than 6 may be greater or equal to 24 inches in total length).” I’m skipping part of the season limit description—no, please don’t thank me. However, it continues with, “Salmon greater than or equal to 24 inches total length must be recorded on your salmon permit. Salmon less than 24 inches total length count in the bag limit and possession limit but need not be recorded on the permit” Last Friday, June 19th the daily limit changed to, “…Six (6) salmon per day, none (0) of which can be greater than or equal to 24 inches, etc. (i.e. no adults can be kept).” However, this only applies to the mainstem of the Salmon from Time Zone Bridge to Shorts Creek and the mouth of the Little Salmon about 200 yards up stream. The rest of the previously described fishing area (see previous paragraph) has these new daily limits, “…six (6) salmon, but only one (1) can be greater than 24 inches.” And now as I said earlier, after today, the only local water open will be from Short Creek to Vinegar. I don’t see the daily limit posted for that. Other season regulations are also in effect in other parts of the state and can quickly change too.
I want you to keep in mind that there are many other regulations to follow such as tackle restrictions that for example include using only barbless hooks (remember you must release wild fish), and this newby “special’ restriction: “Fishing from any watercraft is prohibited within 30 yards of the west shoreline of the Salmon River from the Riggins City Park boat ramp upstream to a posted boundary approximately 200 yards from the mouth of the Little Salmon.” I really do need to get a GPS!
Well, I was planning some more stuff here, but I can’t imagine that I have any readers left for this article. Instead I’ll quickly end it. How many salmon did I catch this year you might wonder? None. I did not even buy a permit nor guide a trip. The water was too high. The few good public bank spots are (were) elbow to elbow—combat fishing—I just can’t bring myself to do it. Power boats can get to a few spots and they quickly dominate them. Me, I have a drift boat. There is very little water good for a drift boat to hold in at this season’s flows—the currents are strong and eddy lines and boils are powerful. Maybe next year the river levels will be lower when the fish are here because not only are they fun to catch, these salmon are also really good tasting fish—honest!
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