Salmon Catch Provisions Extended

[Derby]

Salmon catch provisions extended


Vancouver Sun October 24, 2012


The Canadian and U.S. governments have agreed to extend for one year a key provision of the Canada-U.S. Pacific Salmon Treaty.
The provision lets U.S. fishermen to catch up to 16.5 per cent of total allowable catch of Fraser River-bound sockeye and 25.7 per cent of the total allowable catch of pink salmon when those migrating fish enter U.S. waters.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

 

[profisher]

Well for this years commercial Sockeye fishery (Fraser Bound) what is 16.5% of 0? Does this mean the US commercial guys layed off Fraser Sockeye completely this year?

 

[Derby]

That would make sense...but the more I make sense of it all.... the less it does

 

[reelfast]

guess what? i don't know of a single fisherman on this side of the line who caught a sockeye in MA6. this might be a problem, or not, up closer to the fraser river in those marine areas but don't know. the pinks that will be arriving this coming year are puget sound headed to the tune of millions of fish. bunch of ********. this is the same sort of management that put unclipped Coho off limits during september this year. i brought well over 200 coho to the side of the boat to be able to harvest a dozen. how about the mortality factor for those fish? we fish barbless, single hook, two hook limit, all fish much be released in the water, no nets for me when doing this. bleeders, nonetheless, and 8-10 i had to handle in the water to revive. what stupid policies on both side of the border.

 

[tubber]

The Canadian National Railway construction at Hell's Gate destroyed the sockeye runs by causing a slide in 1913. A joint Canada-US fishway construction project was completed in 1966. The US dollars invested led to treaties in which American commercial fishermen were entitled to good chunk of the allowable catch. Treaties make sense because some of the fish are catchable by US fishermen in JDF, near Bellingham and the Apex, among other places, so there needs to be agreements to avoid US fishermen taking too many and Canadian fishermen retaliating by taking more in response. The fish lose in fish wars.
Not until about 1978 did the fishways finally start to pay off for the once again famous Adams River run with 2010 being huge of course.
At one time the basic sockeye strategy was one third to Canadian commercials, one third to US commercials and one third for escapement. Sport fishing for Fraser sockeye was not part of the math. It probably still isn't, but they won't open it for us unless the commercials get a shot at them too, for the optics of it.
1993 was a surprisingly huge sockeye run on the Horsefly, so even though 2009 was not so good, I still have my fingers crossed for next summer. (2013)

 

[trendsetter]

Well for this years commercial Sockeye fishery (Fraser Bound) what is 16.5% of 0? Does this mean the US commercial guys layed off Fraser Sockeye completely this year?

There were some limited US Commercial openings for Fraser sockeye in 2012. Their total catch was 104,850. There were no commercial openings in Canada. The rest of the catch was taken by Canadian Native fisheries (about 450,000), test fisheries (36,000) and us native ceremonial (6,000).

Source - Pacific Salmon Commission, August 2012 :http://www.psc.org/NewsRel/2012/NewsRelease08.pdf

 

[profisher]

trend...so my point is (leave the natives out of it) that if the runs don't support a "traditional" Canadian commercial fishery, it won't support a US one either. I'm not against Americans taking Fraser sockeye inside JDF or the Point Roberts...I'm against them fishing when we determine there isn't a strong enough run to support any commercial fishery. In other words we both fish together and we both lay off together...otherwise the fish keep loosing.

 

[fish4all]

Just like the Halibut quota increase to Alaska (US) this year that made Canada's (as a Country) TAC decrease. This caused major problems for the everyone up here.

Can you explain this? Alaska took a tremendous cut compared to us.

 

[trendsetter]

trend...so my point is (leave the natives out of it) that if the runs don't support a "traditional" Canadian commercial fishery, it won't support a US one either. I'm not against Americans taking Fraser sockeye inside JDF or the Point Roberts...I'm against them fishing when we determine there isn't a strong enough run to support any commercial fishery. In other words we both fish together and we both lay off together...otherwise the fish keep loosing.

I agree totally. I'm not sure why the US side got a fishery this year when the CDN side did not.

 

[reelfast]

that is marine area 7 on this side of the line. all of bellingham bay as well as padilla bay are closed to all sport salmon fishing already. don't know how the commercials got to harvest but not the rec anglers. the rec anglers i talk with have never hooked a sockeye in JDF. now maybe they follow the contours of van isle but on this side of the line they basically don't exist. freshwater spawning areas along JDF and puget sound simply don't exist so the fish are not of concern to us. that may all change with the Elwha dam removal project as it does open a historicaly important fresh water lake to sockeye and chum, only time will tell with this one.

my beef is with the stupid restrictions placed on Coho. the rumor along the strait was this was also having to do with this agreement between countries. how this could apply to Coho is unknown to me but maybe someone can explain that one for all of us.

pinks, chinook, coho and steelhead, all wild, are already spawning in the Elwha. this single important drainage could be a real game changer for all of us fishing JDF.