Story Published:
Oct 24, 2002 at 9:05 AM PDT
Story Updated:
Aug 31, 2006 at 12:50 AM PDT
QUILLAYUTE - The state Department of Fish and
Wildlife has ordered the Quillayute River sport fishery for chinook
salmon closed to protect the run.
But the Quileute Indian Tribe on the Olympic coast doesn't plan
to shut down its net fishery.
The department ordered the sport-fishing cutback effective last
Saturday, prohibiting all fishing in the river from its mouth to
its confluence with the Soleduck and Bogachiel rivers. The order
prohibits retention of chinook on the Bogachiel, Calawah, Dickey,
Soleduck and Hoh rivers.
"Fish are not migrating upstream to the spawning ground in a
normal pattern because of the extremely low water levels," the
department said.
The river originally was scheduled to be open for sport salmon
angling from March 1 through Nov. 30.
The U.S. Geological Survey does not keep real-time stream-flow
data on the Quillayute. However, the Hoh River just to the south of
the Quillayute was running at 350 cubic feet per second this week,
about half its flow on Oct. 21, 2001, according to USGS data.
No emergency closures were put in place on the Quillayute last
year.
The Quileute Tribe continued to fish the Quillayute system this
week in a fishery open from 6 a.m. Monday to 6 p.m. Thursday. The
tribal fishing schedule will continue through the salmon season and
then the steelhead season, into April 2003, the department said.
Witnesses told The News Tribune of Tacoma that tribal fishermen
used jet sleds to herd fish into their gill nets on the Quillayute
this week.
"The fish can see the nets, but they just panic," said Bob
Gooding, owner of Olympic Sporting Goods in Forks.
Quileute Tribal Council information officer Karsten Boysen
denied the accusation.
"Sure, it's illegal," he told The Associated Press by phone.
"Our fishermen don't work that way. Besides, I don't know a
fisherman here who has a jet sled. We can't afford one. And if
there's not enough water for fish to go up the stream, how come
there's enough water for a jet sled? It's absolutely false.
Guaranteed. Somebody is making up stories."
Quileute Council executive director Walter Jackson told the
Peninsula Daily News in Port Angeles that if sports anglers are
upset with anybody, it should be state officials.
"The state is the one that shut them down," Jackson said.
Jackson said Quileute natural resources director Mel Moon told
the state last week that the river was in close to the same shape
as at the same time last year. For that reason, he said, the tribe
has not cut back its four-day-a-week netting schedule.
"The tribe wasn't going to stop fishing because the state said
the river is too low," he said.
Bob Ball, a sport-fishing guide from Forks, said he had started
to organize a "fish-in" by sportsmen on the Quillayute on
Thursday to draw attention to the tribal fishery.
Guide Pat Graham, who also is helping organize the protest,
expects between 10 and 15 guides, mostly members of the Olympic
Peninsula Guides' Association, to take part. Other sport anglers
may also show up, he said.
"We're not doing it against the state, we're just doing it
against the Indians," Graham told the Port Angeles newspaper.
"We don't plan on keeping any fish, we just plan on fishing to
get a point across," he said. "If the Indians are going to be
able to net, then we should all be able to fish."
The state Department of Fish and Wildlife regulates sport
fishing. The tribe regulates its own fishery under authority
granted by U.S. District Court Judge George Boldt in 1974.
"Our complaint is not that we're closed," Ball said. "But we
feel that with conditions the way they are, the nets need to come
out. There's a crisis."
The state has not yet decided whether to invoke its
court-granted authority to close all fisheries - including tribal
net fisheries - in the case of a conservation emergency.
"We don't have the data to classify the situation there as an
emergency conservation issue, even though there is a conservation
issue," said Tim Waters, a department spokesman. "We're still
talking to the tribe and trying to gather more data to determine if
an emergency exists.
"We're confident that, should we get to that point, the tribes
and the state would agree to shut down to protect the fishery."
Bill Freymond, regional fisheries manager for the department,
said his concern was that the chinook weren't moving upstream.
"Hopefully, once we get a little bit of rain, the fish will
move upstream," he said.
|
