Document text
One fish, twice the reward freeman foto David Pease holds a spring chinook salmon he is about to recycle Tuesday into the upper Rogue River at TouVelle State Park. The recycling of excess Cole Rivers Hatchery fish are returned to the upper Rogue to give anglers another chance to catch them. By Mark Freeman CENTRAL POINT � David Pease is making sure the chinook salmon in his truck get a second chance to make a good first impression on upper Rogue River anglers. Pease is a Cole Rivers Hatchery technician whose main task this week is making anglers happy. He is taking excess spring chinook from hatchery holding ponds and ferrying them by truck 25 miles downstream for release back into the Rogue. These ``rerun�� salmon are part of a recycling program aimed at getting more excess hatchery salmon caught by anglers who can leave the upper Rogue happily hauling one of its crown jewels. That makes these fish, and Pease, well-received. ``People always like to see the fish truck show up,�� Pease says. ``But when it shows up with 20-pound salmon in it, you�re everybody�s buddy. People love it.�� There�s 375 more spring chinook salmon to love in the upper Rogue this week as the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife kicks off this year�s version of the great salmon recycling program. Agency biologists expect to recycle 2,000 excess hatchery spring chinook this year, with all the salmon released at the TouVelle State Park boat ramp. The hope is that a second run through the upper Rogue salmon fishery will lead to the fish getting caught instead of showing up in hatchery ponds. Hatchery biologists estimate that close to half the recycled chinook were caught last year by anglers during their second upstream swim. ``Every fish in the river,�� Medford fishermen Marvin Jones says, ``is another fish I have a chance to catch.�� The ODFW used to recycle excess spring chinook during the hey-day runs of the Rogue in the 1980s. But the agency scrapped the program in 1989 as too expensive for the benefits it created. But those attitudes changed last year. With run numbers way down and the percentage of hatchery fish way up, biologists returned to the recycling program to boost fish numbers in the river and give anglers more chances to catch hatchery fish. And these aren�t the kind of recycled cast-offs you put in the red bin next to the curb on trash day. The recycled springers average about 20 pounds, are bright as a new quarter and are some of the best-fighting, best-eating salmon anyone can expect to get from an Oregon fish hatchery. Recycled fish have a hole punched in their left gill plate to denote their rerun status. Pease and other technicians released the first 375 of the chinook in four trips this week to TouVelle State Park. More may be released this week. The fish are considered excess because they are above what is needed at the hatchery. Of the hundreds of fish that swim each week from the upper Rogue into the fish-collecting pond at Cole Rivers, 80 females and 40 males are kept for spawning, Pease says. The rest either go toward the recycling program, are given to Native American tribes to fulfill Oregon�s treaty obligations or are sold to a seafood processor through an annual bidding process, Pease says. No chinook from Cole Rivers have been sold or given away for treaty obligations so far this year, Pease says. The recycle program is the current priority for the excess fish, he says. This year�s releases will total 2,000, or twice as many as last year. The recycling will end before the end of June. Former research indicates that fish recycled after June are far less likely to be caught. Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. Call him at 776-4470, or e-mail him at [email protected] ) Outdoor Journal Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Mail Tribune � 2000 -- Medford, Oregon USA