Chetco’s giant salmon spawn controversy
John Martin, left, Chad Brunick, center, and Sean Metzger, all of Klamath Falls, boat a fall chinook salmon in Chetco on Sunday. AP Photo
BROOKINGS (AP) — Despite having only a sliver of the Chetco River open to angling this month, John Martin of Klamath Falls does not lament the loss of upstream fishing access.
He drops his anchovy into the estuary between the jetties, then motors his small aluminum boat, already loaded with two friends and three adult Chinook. The fish are all around 30 pounds.
They’re trolling, though, through no more than 200 yards of the Chetco.
“Because this is where the fish are,” Martin says.
Though most of the Chetco remains closed to angling to protect a poor return of wild Chinook to this South Coast stream, anglers are finding they don’t need much space to catch fish eclipsing 50 pounds in an ongoing fishery that is as popular as it is maligned.
Estuary waters west of U.S. Highway 101 are the only part of the Chetco open under a restricted bag limit of one wild Chinook a day and no more than two this season. The low wild fall Chinook return is blamed largely on poor ocean conditions, and is expected throughout Southern Oregon streams.
But anglers are making the best of that one wild Chinook a day, hauling in some of the largest salmon seen here in two decades. Tops so far comes courtesy of Carl Johnson of Brookings, whose 58-pounder caught Sept. 30 unofficially is the largest Chinook caught in the Chetco Bay since the early 1980s.
“That was a gorgeous, gorgeous fish,” Johnson said. “I’ve caught several in that category, but none on the Chetco and not in the estuary.”
Not everyone is sharing Johnson’s enthusiasm.
Pete Celli and a handful of other anglers within Oregon’s Banana Belt believe the factors that led to severe cutbacks or elimination of Chinook fishing in the ocean this year should also apply to the estuary. The river needs spawners.
“They’re doing a pretty good job of whacking a lot of big wild fish,” said Celli, who lives on the Chetco six miles upstream of the current fishing zone. “They need to get upstream. That’s why I’m not fishing this year.”
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has forecast for about 800 wild Chinook to hit the Chetco this year. That’s far under the 3,000 to 5,000 wild spawners likely to be targeted in an upcoming draft fall Chinook management plan.
“We’re pretty comfortable that we can have some harvest on those fish,” says Todd Confer, the ODFW’s Gold Beach District fish biologist. “There’s probably more effort and fish getting caught than I anticipated, but I don’t think we’re in a situation where we’ll see any over-harvest.”
About 150,000 hatchery-raised Chinook are released into the Chetco annually, and this year’s return of 3-year-old hatchery fish have clipped adipose fins. Anglers can keep one wild fish a day, but can continue fishing to catch and keep up to five jacks a day, as well as another hatchery adult.
Despite a recent turn in ocean-survival rates, this year’s crop of big fall Chinook hitting Oregon streams remains down thanks largely to poor ocean-survival rates on smolts early on.
Federal fish managers banned all commercial Chinook fishing off Oregon and California this spring and allowed only a token recreational season off Southern Oregon and Northern California around Labor Day. The traditional October ocean season off the Chetco mouth also was canceled, and the ODFW banned Chetco fishing on most of the river until Nov. 7.
Left open is the few hundred yards of the Chetco bay, where Brookings author and fishing guide Andy Martin shares the water daily with harbor seals and brown pelicans in search of fish.
The Chinook seem to come in and out of the estuary with the high tide, and weren’t venturing upstream because the Chetco’s freshwater flows have been extremely low.
The Chinook are bright, tough and spirited — like Johnson’s salmon, which took 30 minutes to land.
“That fish came up with a big splash and headed to the ocean full-speed,” Martin said.
This fishery is weather-dependent and can change overnight. When the Chetco swells from the next big rain, the upstream door will open and the Chinook will charge upriver and put an end to the Chetco bay’s unique October fishery.
“I’ll stay as long as they stay,” Martin said.
