HEADING INTO THE back stretch of North of Falcon, the annual salmon season setting process, anglers should be cautiously optimistic about potential saltwater and Puget Sound freshwater fisheries.
The proposals for Marine Areas 5, 6, 9 and 12, plus a five-page listing of Puget Sound freshwater fisheries are available at tinyurl.com/PDN-NorthofFalcon18 and public comment will be accepted through Sunday.
Final salmon seasons will be adopted at the Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting running from Friday through Wednesday at the Sheraton Portland Airport Hotel in Portland, Ore.
The biggest takeaway from the proposals — saltwater anglers from Sekiu through Puget Sound might see the return of late summer and early fall coho seasons.
Modeling done by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife for Marine Area 5 (Sekiu) shows mark-selective chinook retention running from July 1-Aug. 15, while hatchery coho retention would potentially run from July 1 through September.
Any September coho fishery in Area 5 would be more than last season, when coho retention was shuttered on the Washington state side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca in a bid to protect depleted stocks.
Mark-selective winter blackmouth chinook would start in mid-February of 2019 and run through April — a gain of a month over this season which opened midway through March this year.
Marine Area 6 (East Strait of Juan de Fuca) also would share in the coho wealth after anglers sat out the late summer/early fall last season.
Anglers could keep hatchery coho from July through September.
Summer mark-selective chinook retention would be open from July through August, while winter blackmouth would open Nov. 1 and run through April 15.
Marine Area 9’s (Admiralty Inlet) hatchery chinook season might go from mid-July through mid-August with blackmouth open from December through mid-April.
The area also would reopen in August and September for hatchery coho, a move back to some normalcy after last season, when following the close of the summer chinook fishery, angling was limited to bank only through Labor Day and then closed.
Hood Canal
Marine Area 12 is broken up into two parts, north of Point Ayock (south of Brinnon) and south of Point Ayock.
Hatchery chinook wouldn’t open until October north of Point Ayock, while a non-selective coho fishery would begin in August.
South of Point Ayock, anglers could go after coho and mark-selective chinook starting in July.
Dungeness River
Proposed hatchery coho limits for a Dungeness River season running from Oct. 16 to Jan. 31 include a daily limit of six, four of which may be adults, from the river mouth all the way up to the forks at the Dungeness Forks Campground. Fish must be 12 inches or longer in length.
Big Quilcene River
Nothing is expected to change on the Big Quilcene River from Rodgers Street to U.S. Highway 101, where anglers should expect the four adult coho limit 12 inches or longer in length regulations to stay the same for a fishery running from Aug. 16 to Oct. 31.
Skokomish River
A curious “TBD” appears on the Skokomish River stretch from the Tacoma Powerlines to U.S. Highway 101, which has been closed to fishing since 2016 when the Skokomish Tribe blocked public access to the lower stretch of the river bordering its reservation.
The Tribe’s move came about when the U.S. Department of the Interior issued an opinion affirming the river was part of the reservation and not controlled by the state.
Now, the state Attorney General’s office, which can’t sue the tribe or the federal government because the two governments have sovereign immunity, could bait the feds into a lawsuit by allowing Fish and Wildlife to open a recreational fishery.
I’m not sure how the state could do so without angering the Skokomish Tribe, which could become a sticking point between Fish and Wildlife and tribal co-managers.
New licenses
A reminder that if you are age 15 or older, your 2017-18 fishing or hunting license expired at midnight last Sunday.
Young people under age 15 can fish for free.
Licenses and permits are available online at fishhunt.dfw.wa.gov, by phone at 866-246-9453 and from a variety of sporting goods stores and license dealers around Jefferson and Clallam counties and across the state.
