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Mark Freeman Commentary Offshore outlook for salmon looks to be the best in years By MARK FREEMAN Sport-fishermen who head to sea each summer off the Northern California and Southern Oregon coasts are poised to enjoy what could be the most liberal recreational salmon-fishing season since the Reagan era. And the better the season, the better the reason for inland anglers to rediscover the pleasures of plucking fresh chinook salmon from the sea -- and thereby keeping afloat the economies in Brookings and other port towns. The first two-chinook daily bag limit for sportsmen since 1993, plus a fishing season that will last at least 2 months, could come this summer to sportsmen fishing for chinook salmon out of Brookings, Gold Beach, Eureka and Crescent City. For the past seven years, sport anglers have had bag limits no more generous than one chinook salmon a day. And for five years before 1993, seasons were shortened by strict harvest quotas that kept sport-anglers at bay. The Pacific Fishery Management Council is considering the two-chinook limit today and Friday during meetings in Portland. The council's recommendations will be forwarded to the Department of Commerce, which sets the actual sport and commercial seasons. If the council acts as expected, the two-fish season would begin as early as the end of May. "It's a real cat's meow, isn't it?" says Jim Welter, a Brookings man who follows ocean-fishing seasons as a sportsmen's advocate. Expanding the daily limit from one fish to two does more than double the pleasure of ocean sport-fishing, where anglers troll anchovies in deep water off popular ports like Brookings and Crescent City whenever the surly summer seas allow it. The prospects of catching, and keeping, two chinook is a strong lure for tourists to return to Brookings after spending most of the recent summers at home. In the salmon heydays, half the pleasure boats traveling over Brookings' Chetco River bar came from the Rogue Valley. But cutbacks to the one-chinook daily limits kept many of those boaters at home. The Rogue Valley armada likely would return with doubling the daily catch limit. "What do you think people in Medford, Ashland, Grants Pass and Klamath Falls want? Two fish," Welter says. "As it works out today, they won't come for one fish," Welter says. "But with two fish a day, and take four fish home, they'll come." The PFMC annually sets fishing seasons on the West Coast, where the waters are broken into zones. Southern Oregon and Northern California form the Klamath Management Zone, where sport, commercial and Native American chinook salmon catches are set to ensure that adequate numbers of wild fall chinook salmon return to Klamath River spawning grounds annually. The Klamath Zone includes the ports of Brookings, Gold Beach and Port Orford in Oregon, along with the California ports of Eureka, Trinidad and Crescent City. Since 1993, depressed numbers of spawning wild Klamath chinook have kept sport-fishing seasons short and light in the ocean. But computer models forecast a nice rebound for chinook bound for the Klamath this year, virtually double that of last year, according to PFMC estimates. The PFMC has three Klamath Zone options on the table today. Option 1: May 30 through July 4, and Aug. 5 through Sept. 10. Two chinook per day, no more than four fish in seven consecutive days. Option 2: May 27 through July 6, and July 29 through Sept. 10. One chinook per day, no more than four in seven consecutive days. Option 3: June 1 through July 4, and Aug. 5 through Sept. 10. Two chinook per day, no more than 4 in seven consecutive days. As throughout most of the 1990s, no coho salmon fishing will be allowed in the Klamath Zone. The zone's wild coho are listed as a threatened species. Some limited coho fishing is expected again this year in the Central and North coasts. Of the Klamath Zone chinook options, Options 1 and 3 are identical in that they have shorter season dates to all but guarantee Klamath chinook are not accidentally over-harvested. The difference, though, is Option 3 allows for two fewer fishing days. Option 2 has a one-fish daily bag limit, but its 85 fishing days create no buffer against over-harvest. Welter and other sport-angling advocates are pushing for a mixture of options 1 and 2: the season dates of Option 2, but with the two-fish harvest of Option 1. Welter argues that the Klamath Zone's sport anglers have shown in recent years that they do not catch more fish than expected, so the buffer against over-fishing is not needed. (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