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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend February 10, 2005 No limit to how far fishermen will go for extra casts Outdoors By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune On an October day last year, an Oregon State Police trooper walked in to the angling access area just downstream of the Sandy River Hatchery to check whether people casting for the Sandy’s fall chinook salmon had the proper fishing licenses tags. The trooper checked nine guys in a row and found that each one had duplicate harvest tags, replacement for supposedly lost tags. Could it be that all nine were absent-minded anglers with slippery fingers that fall? OSP Lt. Walt Markee isn’t buying that. One of the leaders in the OSP Fish and Wildlife Enforcement Division, Markee believes a pretty good chunk of them more likely filled their old tags with annual limits of salmon and steelhead, then conveniently lost their full tag and replaced it with a fresh tag for just $6.50. "They’re doing it to get around the rules about limits of wild fish," Markee says. "They’re doing it, they’re talking about it, they’re bragging about doing it and we’re having a hard time catching them. Advertisement "That’s the flat-out truth," he says. "We’re having a real hard time catching them." So, Markee wants to make it harder for anglers to abuse the duplicate tag rules. He wants new rules that would require anglers to join big-game and turkey hunters and get duplicate tags at an ODFW office instead of one of the 600 point-of-sale licensing outlets statewide. Markee also wants them to sign an affidavit that they truly lost their original tag, declare how many salmon and steelhead were on their tag and have an ODFW employee mark off the declared number of slots on the new tag. "That will make it a lot harder than having anglers walk into G.I. Joe’s or Fred Meyer and say, ‘I lost my tag. I need another,’" Markee says. Markee will make his pitch Friday to the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission during its meeting Friday in Troutdale. A peek into the duplicate-tag numbers show some sort of change may be needed to curb what appears to be a growing problem. Each year, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife sells about 230,000 adult and juvenile angler harvest tags. Those $21.50 tags allow their holders to catch and keep up to 20 salmon and steelhead, five sturgeon and two halibut for that calendar year. There are also various sub-limits for wild salmon and steelhead. On the Rogue, for instance, anglers can keep up to five wild winter steelhead annually, and no more than three wild spring chinook based on season dates and location on the river. Similarly, the Columbia River has a five-sturgeon limit, and areas like Tillamook Bay streams have a limit on 10 wild chinook per year. For many years, Oregonians seemed equally adept at keeping track of their tags. From 1992 through 1998, the sales of duplicate tags were pretty constant at about 1,800 per year. The average from 1999 through 2004 was 6,217 tags. Last year’s sales of 7,411 duplicate tags is a record and now accounts for 3 percent of overall tag sales. And of those, 44 percent of duplicate-tag holders also had at least one other duplicate tag in the past five years. "Certain people have a tendency to lose things," says Rhine Messmer, the ODFW’s angling program manager. "We’re giving people the benefit of the doubt, and people are taking advantage of it." For some, it’s strictly economics. Anglers could spend $12 for a hatchery harvest tag that allows them to kill and tag up to 10 more hatchery fish. But the duplicate tag costs less and has room for up to 20 fish. Plus, cheaters who buy duplicate tags after keeping their legitimate number of wild chinook or steelhead legally cannot keep another limit of wild fish. But they have a good chance at getting away with it under the current rules, provided they simply lie about it. "If we’re seeing this violation in conjunction with wild steelhead harvest or wild chinook harvest, then it’s a conservation issue," Messmer says. Unscrupulous anglers on the Rogue, for instance, can increase the actual kill on protected wild spring chinook without any trace. "The Rogue River is ripe for that kind of thing," he says. "If you lose your tag after keeping two (wild spring chinook), you lose that conservation." No one knows for sure how many people are taking advantage of the current rules, Markee says. But one thing Markee does know is that there are legitimate anglers in need of easy-to-get duplicate tags. For instance, lose your tag on a Saturday and you can’t get a replacement until Monday if forced to get one only at an ODFW office. "That would certainly make enforcement easier," Markee says. "But we don’t want to penalize someone who really lost their tag, either." Markee has talked to representatives of several angling groups and several other options have surfaced. Jacking the price up to, say, $50 for a duplicate tag or requiring a 30-day waiting period for a duplicate tag are options bandied about, he says. But those would require legislative action. The commission can act alone on Markee’s idea. "We’re really concerned about penalizing people who legitimately lose their tag," Markee says. "But the message I get from the public is they want something done." Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2005 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. 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