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Off-shore outlook improves By MARK FREEMAN BROOKINGS -- Sport anglers are gearing up for a summer season of off-shore salmon fishing this year that likely will lead to even more chances than last year to pull a chinook salmon from the deep blue sea. The Pacific Fishery Management Council has set a 70-day summer salmon season for sportsmen in the six ports of Southern Oregon and Northern California that make up the so-called Klamath Management Zone. The Klamath Zone, which includes the Port of Brookings-Harbor, will have a 1999 fishing season that is five days longer than last year, and one that starts late enough in May to reduce the number of lost fishing days due to bad weather. That season will likely extend Brookings' four-year reign as Oregon's top salmon-fishing port, says Russ Crabtree, manager of the Port of Brookings-Harbor. The season opens May 29 and runs continuously through July 4. After a four-week hiatus, fishing resumes July 29 and continues through Sept. 14. The mid-season break is to keep anglers off the water while wild coho, which are a threatened species and off-limits to sportsmen, are most abundant in the area. For the fourth straight year, anglers within the Klamath Zone will get to keep just one chinook a day, and no more than four chinook in any seven consecutive days. All coho -- wild or hatchery bred -- can be kept again in the Klamath Zone. 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. The PFMC set the season Friday in Sacramento, where the council held its annual week-long meetings before setting all sorts of sport and commercial ocean-fishing seasons. The Klamath Zone again does not face the spectre of a mid-season shut-down by a fishing quota. Instead, the '99 season has 70 open fishing days, which will likely result in the same number of fish being caught as a quota would. Sport-fishing interests prefer the set seasons to the quota-based system in Southern Oregon because it brings no 11th-hour shutdowns -- a surprise that no angler who travels from Medford to Brookings wants to feel. "You have to have that time and opportunity (to fish), and stretch it out as far through the season as you can," Crabtree says. While 70 days of being able to catch just one fish might not seem long, it is a far cry from the seven-day season that ocean sportsmen suffered through in 1992. For Klamath Zone anglers, the season last year ran May 23 through June 10, June 21 through July 5, and Aug. 11 through Sept. 13. But about a third of those fishing days were lost to inclement weather that kept boats in the bay, Crabtree says. Starting six days later and loading up on June fishing days -- which tend to be some of the most productive ones for boats launching from Brookings -- those days lost to bad weather should be trimmed, Crabtree says. Brookings last year led Oregon in salmon trips, and about half the annual launchings in Brookings are boaters from the Rogue Valley. Fishing in the KMZ is limited annually to ensure that a minimum number of chinook head into the Klamath River to spawn. The ocean seasons come as the National Marine Fisheries Service has delayed until September a final decision on whether to list wild chinook as a threatened species in Southern Oregon and most of Northern California. For the fifth consecutive year, no fishing is allowed off Southern Oregon for coho. Wild coho are listed as a threatened species. However, there is some limited off-shore angling for hatchery coho allowed off the Central and Northern Oregon coastline. The PFMC set a July 10-31 season for hatchery coho fishing in the ocean from Cape Falcon near the Columbia River down to Humbug Mountain near Port Orford. Fishing will close sooner, however, if and when anglers catch their quota of 15,000 hatchery coho. The limited hatchery-coho season was allowed because it does not allow harvest of threatened wild coho but does give ocean anglers a chance at the excess hatchery coho. This year's ocean population of hatchery coho is estimated at 600,000, about four times higher than last year's estimate. Outdoor Journal main page Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA