Recreational crabbers in this area weren’t particularly happy with the new regulations adopted at a state Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting in Tumwater over the weekend, but most have accepted the inevitable.
“Nobody’s dancing in the streets,” said Mike Chamberlain at Ted’s Sport Center in Lynnwood, “but everyone knew we weren’t going to get an increase in the recreational allocation, so this new setup is probably about as good as we could expect. Customers I’ve talked to are pretty much resigned to it.”
The new regulations provide for sport crabbing everywhere in Puget Sound through the Labor Day weekend, with the possibility of a little more fishing time during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. That’s a much longer season than in recent years for some areas, including local waters, but there were two tradeoffs to accomplishing this feat while still holding the sport catch within allocation limits.
The first tradeoff was a cut in the daily limit from six legal crab to five, throughout Puget Sound. The second was to limit crabbing in certain “high effort” areas to four days per week. Care to guess who gets cut to four fishing days, folks?
Under the new rules:
Marine areas 4 (Neah Bay), 5 (Sekiu) and 13 (south Puget Sound) will open June 18 to crabbing seven days per week.
Marine areas 6 (eastern Strait of Juan de Fuca), 7 South (San Juan Islands), 8-1 (Deception Pass to Camano State Park), 8-2 (Camano State Park to Possession Point), 9 (Admiralty Inlet), 10 (Seattle/Bremerton), 11 (Tacoma/Vashon) and 12 (Hood Canal) will open July 1, Wednesdays through Saturdays only, plus the entire Labor Day weekend, before closing the evening of Sept. 5 for a catch assessment.
Marine Area 7 East (San Juan Islands) will open July 16, Wednesdays through Saturdays, plus the entire Labor Day weekend, closing for a catch assessment Sept. 30.
Marine Area 7 North (San Juan Islands) will open Aug. 17, Wednesdays through Saturdays, plus the entire Labor Day weekend, closing for a catch assessment Sept. 30.
With these seasons in place, shellfish managers expect sport crabbers to harvest roughly 70 percent of their allocation in the high effort areas by the time those areas close for assessment, according to WDFW shellfish policy coordinator Lisa Veneroso. The department would then schedule openings in fall and winter for any additional crab remaining in their allocation, she said.
WDFW’s method of estimating the sport catch drew about as many questions from the 150 or so crabbers at the meeting as did the new seasons. Many recreational crab fishermen have felt for a long time that the department was badly overestimating the number of crab the sport community was taking.
Jeff Koenings, WDFW director, said at the meeting that the department is planning to conduct creel checks in the field at specific sites to compare with, and assess the reliability of, the telephone surveys and catch-card results now used.
“Many sports crabbers are very negative about state management of the resource,” Chamberlain said. “We all realize we’re dealing with a finite resource, but the base on which the allocations were made has changed enormously over the past few years, and needs to be refigured. There are very few non-Indian commercial crabbers who make a full living from crab in Puget Sound – basically the fishery is a dinosaur now – and the numbers need to be reworked.”
Shrimp: Marine areas 9 and 10 closed to recreational shrimp (all species) fishing last week; Hood Canal and Discovery Bay closed yesterday, and local areas 8-1 and 8-2 will close at 3 p.m. Saturday, according to WDFW shellfish biologist Mark O’Toole at La Conner. The reason for closure, O’Toole said, is that recreational spot shrimp allocations have been, or will be, reached by those dates.
Areas 8-1 and 8-2 will reopen June 1 for pink, coonstripe and other shrimp species, but not spot shrimp, with a 150-foot maximum depth restriction. Minimum pot mesh size after June 1 is one-half inch.
Recreational shrimp fishing pressure in Marine Area 9 more than doubled from last year, said biologist Donald Velasquez, from an average of 187 pots counted per day, to an average of 394. The fishing was better, too, with the average Area 9 boat bringing in 14.4 pounds of shrimp, against 8.7 pounds last year.
Anthon Steen at Holiday Market Sports in Burlington said he just mounted a new Ace Line Hauler shrimp pot puller on his boat, and the electric puller brought in 400 feet of line and a pot in 3 minutes, 20 seconds. “On the previous trip, without the puller, a friend and I had to take turns hand-pulling to get a pot up,” he said.
Lingcod: Lings are legal game until June 15, and the season continues to be a productive one. Steen (above) has been doing well at Burrows/Allen Islands, Biz Point, and Deception Pass, on both sides of the slack tide, and on a variety of jigs.
Halibut: In just five days of fishing, anglers in marine areas 3 (La Push) and 4 (Neah Bay) landed 3,637 halibut averaging 20.5 pounds each, according to WDFW assistant director Phil Anderson in Olympia. Excellent fishing and heavy pressure forced the department to close the season in those two areas on Wednesday, Anderson said. The number of anglers fishing out of Neah Bay, mostly charter customers, was up by about 20 percent this year, creel checks revealed.
Once catch figures are confirmed, the two areas will probably be reopened for one or two days during the week of June 13, Anderson said, to harvest any remainder of the annual recreational quota for the north coast.
Hein, Eastern, Partridge, Middle, and Salmon banks, west and south of the San Juans, continue to kick out fair numbers of halibut.
WDFW checks at Cornet Bay launch in Deception Pass State Park over the weekend showed 154 anglers with 42 lings, 5 halibut, and 21 rockfish. Checkers at the Washington Park ramp, west of Anacortes on Saturday, it was 85 anglers with 42 lings, 25 rockfish, and 1 halibut. At the Port of Everett ramp on Saturday and Sunday, it was 59 anglers with 7 lings, 1 halibut, and 4 rockfish.
Checks at Ediz Hook, near Port Angeles, over the weekend, tallied 33 halibut, 9 lings, 11 rockfish, and 13 greenling for 257 anglers. Mike Chamberlain at Ted’s, above, said not to forget the $20,000 Port Angeles Halibut Derby weekend after next. A pretty good sprinkling of fish over 100 pounds have already been taken in the Strait off P.A., Chamberlain said, and the outlook for the derby is an excellent one this year. He has full information and tickets.
Others: Fishing for shad opens Sunday on the Columbia River, from Bonneville Dam to the mouth, and counts over the Bonneville ladder indicate catchable numbers of fish available. The count Tuesday was 3,600 shad, the highest to date this season. River levels are dropping and visibility Monday was at a good five feet. Trout fishing in Snohomish County has been only fair, but several Skagit County lakes are better than that: Heart, Erie, McMurray, Sixteen, and Clear. Lenice, Nunnally, and Big Twin, in the Columbia Basin, are quality lakes and good bets for fly and lure anglers. Kokanee action continues to improve in Lake Stevens, for fish averaging 14 inches; Lake Samish is also good, with larger fish than usual; Baker Lake has been off and on, and the fish small. Good smallmouth bass opportunity in the lower end of the Yakima River now. Fish Lake, near Cheney, is an interesting bet for 10- to 22-inch tiger trout, browns going 17 to 21 inches, and fat, 9- to 12-inch brookies.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
