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Gilpatrick's tag nets him a prize By Mark Freeman Bill Gilpatrick came home from a trip to Eastern Oregon in early July to find two messages from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife on his answering machine. The 68-year-old Coquille retiree felt a cloud of suspicion had cloaked him. "I was wondering what the heck I�d done," says Gilpatrick, "or they wouldn�t be calling me." Gilpatrick nervously telephoned John Leppink of ODFW. First Gilpatrick sighed with relief. Then he smiled. Gilpatrick won a driftboat and trailer as top prize for turning in his 1999 salmon/steelhead harvest tag in an annual drawing meant to entice fishermen to provide their personal records of the salmon and steelhead they kept last year. "They told me I won the driftboat, I just couldn�t believe it," Gilpatrick says. "I�ve fished for steelhead from a driftboat with friends, but I never had one myself. "I haven�t been steelhead fishing much the past few years," he says, "but it looks like I will be with that boat." Gilpatrick will travel from Coquille, in Coos County, to Eagle Point today to pick up his boat and trailer from the Alumaweld factory. Alumaweld donated the 16-foot boat and trailer, valued at $6,000, to the ODFW for the agency�s annual tag drawing. Gilpatrick also will take a tour of Alumaweld�s boat-building facilities before towing his new prize home. The company is happy that someone like Gilpatrick, a long-time angler, won his first driftboat, says Trey Carskadon, Alumaweld�s marketing representative. "Most of the time we give these things away, people say, �Are you going to buy it back?� or �How much is this thing worth?�" Carskadon says. "That�s pretty anti-climactic. "This is the first time in my watch here that a boat�s going to someone who�s really excited about it," he says. For the past five years, the ODFW has used its driftboat giveaway program to lure anglers into turning in their salmon/steelhead harvest tags, on which licensed anglers must list when, where and how many adult salmon or steelhead they catch and keep while fishing in Oregon waterways. The cards also list an area for anglers to log the adult fish they release, but the catch-and-release log is voluntary. The tag system dates back to the 1950s, and the ODFW has collected the tags since the 1960s, says John Leppink, the ODFW�s propagation database coordinator in Portland who oversees the harvest tag drawing. The data collected from the tags helps agency biologists develop long-term harvest trends on rivers such as the Chetco and Applegate, where annual fish counts are not taken at dams like they are at Gold Ray Dam on the upper Rogue River. The tag turn-in program is voluntary, and in the past the agency would typically get less than 20 percent of the tags sent in, Leppink says. Since offering prizes like the driftboat, the turn-in rate has increased to 25 percent of the more than 55,000 salmon/steelhead tags sold annually in Oregon, Leppink says. "That�s pretty good, for an all-volunteer thing," Leppink says. Gilpatrick has dutifully turned his tag in every year for the past 20 years, he says. Most years, his tag swells with the tallies of salmon caught on the lower Rogue and steelhead taken from the nearby Coquille River. But he caught and kept just eighty-five in �98, so he was more than willing to part with the tag, he says. "But I�ve had a good year this year, and I�ll have a good year next year, too," Gilpatrick says. "I�ll be pretty excited to fish steelhead out of the new boat." The 2001 drawing, which will be done from harvest tags used in 2000, will be June 15. To qualify, anglers must give their tags either to licensed agents across Oregon or send them to the ODFW�s Portland office by June 1, Leppink says. Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. Call him at 776-4470, or e-mail him at [email protected] ) Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.