Siuslaw fish monitoring and creel checking..

Be aware- the Siuslaw chinook run is being fully documented by CCRMP this year, expect creel checking at almost every location (including smaller launches and some bank fishing locations), they will also be doing "tag and recapture" to confirm how many adult spawners make it up river this year.

At the main launch Monday, we met our new creel check lady, she is checking weight and length of all tagged fish coming in on boats and she is supported by 2 Troopers here which is nice to see. They were out in their boat Monday, probably down by the jaws where most the fishing was going on.

Be extra diligent about your species identification and accurate tag entries, no wild coho from the river until Sept.15 and only 1 per day/2 for the year after that. And if you retain a wild coho in the ocean before Sept.15, during the 'any ocean coho' season (Aug30-Sept30) you cannot fish in the river on the way back to the launch.

On the upside, you can gut out your salmon out into the river this year, the crabs will love that, just keep the fish intact (head and tail on, do not fillet it) to retain size and species and fin clip status.

cheers, roger

That isn't the norm there?

Seems like every popular fishery I frequent has a checker at all the launches during the meat of the season.

No fish checker at the Nehalem yet, but we saw the crab checker last week.

DrTheopolis said:

That isn't the norm there?

Seems like every popular fishery I frequent has a checker at all the launches during the meat of the season.

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it unfortunately has not been here for the last few years, notably less checking when the wild coho quota was dropped for the Slaw. However, the Siuslaw is one of the rivers monitored as part of the Pacific Salmon Treaty with Canada, chinook run was intensely monitored and studied 2001-2006. This year they are doing a follow-up intensive study to confirm the run prediction models, they need to collect really good catch data so there will be extra creel checkers here this year. cheers, roger

I see.

I wonder if they also do like on the Columbia, where on weekends, they have a checker just about everywhere (including the banks), and fly over in an airplane counting boats/heads. That way, they get a good idea of fish-per-rod, and can extrapolate catch by number of boats/rods counted.

I have already been over working on Sarah..................

tag and recapture news release:

http://www.dfw.state.or.us/news/2014/august/082014b.asp

DrTheopolis said:

I see.

I wonder if they also do like on the Columbia, where on weekends, they have a checker just about everywhere (including the banks), and fly over in an airplane counting boats/heads. That way, they get a good idea of fish-per-rod, and can extrapolate catch by number of boats/rods counted.

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I would imagine instead doing a flyover they would just drive the road and count the cars

FishNinja said:

I would imagine instead doing a flyover they would just drive the road and count the cars

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the tag and recapture sounds really cool, I might not get this exactly correct (leaving out lots of small details) but from the presentation at our STEP meeting, I got this:

over the whole run, mid-August to late-October, they will go out at night with boat and people in the water, set up a net and wait for a fish. each chinook they capture they will measure, take a fin sample for DNA, punch a hole in gill plate. say for example they tag a total of 400 adult chinook. unknown is how many adult chinook pass by without getting tagged. (to estimate the total run of spawning chinooks they need to extrapolate from tagged fish to total fish)

at spawning locations, collect spawned out fish over a specific stretch of river. count and document all chinook that spawned. do this for several stretches of spawning grounds (most likely the same stretches used in the 2001-2006 studies). say for example a stretch has 200 dead fish and 2 of them have the tag in their gill plate. that means for each one that got tagged, 100 got past and spawned without getting tagged. check another stretch, say 90 got by for each one tagged. check another stretch, say 110 got by...

so if the dead fish "recapture" data shows on average that 100 got by untagged and a total of 400 were tagged, then the run estimate would be 40,000. very cool (especially if that 40K number is what they come up with for this years run)...roger