Document text
Photo by Mark Freeman Cole Rivers Hatchery technician Luke Miller releases spring chinook recycled Tuesday into the upper Rogue River. Recycled chinook a godsend for guides By MARK FREEMAN State fish biologists have returned to an old trick this season for helping Rogue River anglers catch more hatchery spring chinook salmon, and already it is providing welcomed treats to anglers. Excess adult spring chinook at Cole Rivers Hatchery are getting trucked back downstream weekly to TouVelle State Park and released this month to give upper Rogue anglers a second chance at catching them -- and that is exactly what fishermen are doing. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife used to recycle excess spring chinook during the hey-day runs of the 1980s. The agency scrapped the program in 1989 as too expensive for the benefits it created. But those attitudes have changed now that the run numbers are way down and the percentage of hatchery fish is way up. The recycled chinook are paying dividends to anglers like fishing guide Bill Urie, whose clients this month have caught five "rerun" chinook -- which have a paper-punch hole in their gill plates. Two of those five were the only fish caught by Urie's clients that day, meaning the recycled fish turned disappointing trips into pleasant ones. "They've saved me," Urie says. "There's two days when I would have been dusted if they hadn't dumped those fish." For others like Terry O'Connors, who has caught two of the rerun chinook, the excess fish provide more incentive to fish -- thereby creating more incentive to continue this experimental program beyond this year. "I think it's great," says O'Connors, an Eagle Point-based fishing guide. "I think it's something that should be explored more." ODFW biologists hope to create even more success stories by recycling 1,000 excess chinook from Cole Rivers Hatchery by the end of this month. The program mirrors a similar and popular program for recycling summer steelhead each fall. Excess chinook are collected at Cole Rivers Hatchery ponds and trucked downstream to TouVelle State Park, where they are released back into the Rogue. The fish retrace their up-stream spawning run, while anglers try to intercept them with lures or bait. With 300 more chinook recycled Tuesday, hatchery workers have released 700 fish from more than 4,000 fish that entered the hatchery by mid-June, hatchery Manager Bill Otto says. The final 300 fish will be recycled early next week, Otto says. So far, only 12 have returned to the hatchery, Otto says. The rest have either been caught by anglers or are still in the river. Using various ODFW formulas, recycling 1,000 hatchery chinook in the upper Rogue will likely result in 130 more fish being caught. Applying various economic formulas that estimate financial value of sport-caught Rogue River chinook and angling days, those extra fish would translate into as much as $24,000 extra for local fishing guides, tackle shops, restaurants and motels. For years, one of the most frustrating occurrences in the spring chinook run is that more hatchery fish swim past anglers and reach Cole Rivers pens than are caught. The excess fish are sold to seafood companies, and the profits are placed in a statewide "carcass fund" that finances hatchery operations -- usually elsewhere in the state. ODFW biologists decided to resurrect the chinook recycling program this year to help boost catches of hatchery fish in a below-average run of chinook. Hatchery fish out-number wild fish 3-to-1. The recycled fish average 14 pounds, and they are getting caught throughout the upper Rogue with different fishing methods. All five of the rerun chinook caught by Urie's clients were hooked on plug lures within a quarter-mile of the TouVelle boat ramp. The two reruns pulled into O'Connors' driftboat were hooked on roe at Casey State Park and the Pump Hole a short distance downstream, he says. And odds are, they have been caught everywhere in between. Studies done on the upper Rogue in the early 1980s indicated that 13 percent of the recycled adult spring chinook end up caught by anglers. The remaining either return again to the hatchery or die in the river before the fall spawn, he says. The recycling will end next week because those same early '80s studies showed that only 5 percent of the springers recycled in July were caught by anglers. When finished, the program will cost about $7,300. That includes an estimated $6,000 that the ODFW would have received by selling the excess fish instead of recycling them. The benefits, however, will total anywhere from $15,235 to just under $24,000, based on formulas used to predict angler effort per fish caught and the average amount of money spent per angler per day while fishing for spring chinook on the upper Rogue. Those formulas were created by economists during a survey of Rogue anglers in 1992-93. The ODFW does not plan to study whether the predicted catch of recycled chinook actually occurs. The expense seems worth it this year because it helps boost upper Rogue fishing, Otto says. "I hope they catch them," Otto says. "I'm sure (anglers) are glad we're doing something." (Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. He can be reached at 541- 776-4470.) Outdoor Journal main page Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA