Changes to Steelhead fishing

Changes to Steelhead fishing

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Josh Mills tells me big changes in the way the Steelhead are fished. Big, big changes are in store for the Olympic Peninsula and west coast of the state of Washington. Feeling returns have continued to stack on each other on rivers. And so fisheries managers were left with some really hard choices. Are they going to have a situation where they have to close fishing all entirely, or are they going to have some modifications on how anglers could go about it? And so what they've looked into and what they've enacted as of middle of December is that anglers will no longer be able to fish out of boats in many of the rivers on the Olympic Peninsula, as well as some other gear and terminal gear restrictions. And the theory is, is that we've become so efficient as anglers at catching fish from the moment they cross the bar till when they get to their spawning grounds, then some rivers, each fish in recent studies have been caught one point three times, and there's delayed effects and mortality delayed effects on spawning capacity and spawning ability. So with the ban on fishing from boats like they did on the Deschutes River and have for decades upon decades, is that you're giving fish in river sanctuary and giving them the ability to rest and not be have constantly being angled to. Josh, ever the conservationist.
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