By Tom Gentle Last August, a special sportfishing season to catch hatchery coho opened off the mouth of the Columbia River. The season was to remain open for eight weeks or until 7,000 fish had been caught. It took only six days for salmon anglers to reach the 7,000 fish limit. There are two lessons to this story. First, salmon fishing is a big deal in Oregon, a fact confirmed by Liz Hamilton, executive director of the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association. Her organization represents businesses that cater to recreational anglers, from makers of boats and fishing reels to sporting goods stores, marinas and guides. |
 Anglers haul in fall chinook from the Columbia River near Portland. Sportfishing restrictions are intended to cut pressure on salmon. |
"Salmon are the heart and soul of sportfishing in Oregon. Not only do large numbers of people fish for salmon and steelhead, but they do so with passion and commitment," Hamilton said.
The second lesson of the shortened fishing season is that salmon anglers catch a lot of fish and have been one of the contributors to the salmon decline.
How big is salmon angling in Oregon? Of the 800,000 anglers who purchased fishing licenses in 1996, roughly one-third, or 265,000, also received a salmon and steelhead tag that allowed the holder to fish for salmon.
Sportfishing is a big business in the state. In 1996, anglers spent almost $623 million in in economic activity, according to statistics compiled by the American Sportfishing Association. That total applies to all kinds of recreational fishing, including trout, sturgeon, bass, walleye, halibut and ocean bottomfish. Salmon angling accounts for one-third of that total or more.
Unlike other sport fish, salmon are caught in both saltwater and fresh water, from the ocean to coastal bays to coastal rivers and tributaries of the Columbia River. Such wide geographic distribution as well as the varying life cycles of different species helps explain why recreational fishing for salmon can continue even as some populations of salmon are declining. In some rivers, a fall run may be in trouble, but a spring run may be healthy. The runs on other rivers may be consistently healthy.
But anglers have encountered more restrictive regulations to protect salmon populations in recent years. Restrictions include closure of streams, shortened seasons, bag limits, catch-and-release rules, prohibitions on bait and certain types of fish hooks. These restrictions have applied to various runs of chinook, coho and steelhead on streams such as the Willamette, Deschutes, Rogue, lower Columbia and many smaller streams on the southern Oregon coast.
Perhaps the most notable effect of the salmon decline on recreational fishing in Oregon has been the closure since 1994 of most recreational ocean coho fishing. Hamilton called it "a most painful closure. It was a tremendous loss."
Coho, which are caught near the surface in water close to the coastline, bite with abandon and are prized for their fighting qualities. The number of salmon and steelhead tags issued in 1994 gives an indication of the effect of the coho season closure. The number of tags dropped from a high of 312,300 in 1989 to 176,000 in 1994, or 136,000 fewer potential salmon anglers.
With coho out of the picture, many anglers have shifted to fishing for other species of fish, thus putting more fishing pressure on other species. "And those who can afford it now head to Alaska or Canada. So instead of taking several salmon fishing trips a year in Oregon, we're seeing people make one trip up north," Hamilton said.
"The sportfishing closure really hit the charterboats in the small ports like Winchester Bay and Gold Beach," said Ginny Goblirsch, OSU Extension Sea Grant agent.
Coho fishing was the backbone of the charterboat industry, according to Frank Warren, a Portlander who operates a charterboat out of Hammond at the mouth of the Columbia River. "Now we're about as low as we can get without shutting down," Warren said. "This five-day hatchery coho season doesn't really help charterboat operators. You can't even pay your insurance in a five-day season."
Unlike commercial salmon trollers who switched to chinook when coho fishing was banned, charterboat operators do not have the proper gear to catch chinook, which are caught at greater depths farther offshore than coho. With ocean chinook unavailable, charterboats have turned to halibut and bottomfish in the ocean and sturgeon in the Columbia River as alternatives.
Ironically, the switch to other ocean species has put more strain on these stocks, most notably lingcod and other bottomfish.
Thanks to the variety of different fish in Oregon, sportfishing remains one of the state's great attractions. And because of the huge numbers of anglers, the sportfishing industry represents one of the best hopes for the future of salmon in Oregon, according to Hamilton. She pointed out that salmon anglers are the one group that interacts with salmon at every place they are found, from the ocean to the distant inland tributaries.
Recreational anglers have been a significant force in salmon recovery efforts as far back as the 1960s. When the Oregon legislature passed a law establishing the Salmon and Trout Enhancement Program, or STEP, in the early 1980s, anglers were major participants in voluntary STEP activities to improve and restore populations of salmon and trout.
"There isn't a group more dedicated to the future health of our streams than sportfishermen," said Hamilton, who counts herself among those early STEP volunteers who planted trees on streambanks and placed logs and rocks in streams to create better habitat for salmon.