Washington and Oregon have agreed to further substantial reductions in allowable catches of Columbia River white sturgeon as the great fish's numbers continue to decline in the lower river.
Under this conservative accord, personal use "catch-and-keep" fishing is already under way in a stratified system of openings extending upstream from Buoy 10 to Bonneville Dam. It is expected to continue through early summer.
FIRST SALMON SEASONS SET
A conservative strategy also has been adopted to govern the 2012 early personal use salmon fishery on the lower Columbia River.
Though a significant return of upriver spring chinook, the fourth biggest anticipated run on record, is forecast this year, managers will conduct the first installment of the fishery under an imposed limitation or buffer until they can update the run's strength as well as catches with hard numbers. That update is set to happen in early April.
For now, anglers can expect that bag limits, season lengths and some fishing days will be affected.
HALIBUT COMMISSION ACTS
The International Pacific Halibut Commission wound up its annual meeting Monday, held this year in Anchorage, Alaska, acknowledging continued decline in the North Pacific's vaunted halibut population, most notably in its northernmost management zones.
It, too, imposed significant reductions on the overall harvest of Pacific halibut that will be most significantly felt in the northern fisheries.
In accordance with the Pacific Fisheries Management Council's catch-sharing plan for waters off the lower 48 states, personal use (sport) fishers north of the Columbia River to the Canadian border will be governed by a catch ceiling of 214,110 pounds of flatties.
That's second largest bite (21 percent) out of the IPHC's Area 2A overall 989,000-pound catch limit.
For comparison, last year, Washington recreational anglers worked under a 216,498-pound catch cap.
COMING SUNDAY
For more details about the Columbia River winter/spring salmon and sturgeon fisheries as well as catch allocation guidelines ratified by the IPHC on 2012 personal use halibut fisheries, read Sunday's Outdoors Column.
Doug Huddle, the Bellingham Herald's outdoors correspondent, since 1983, has written a weekly fishing and hunting column that now appears Sundays. Read his blog and contact him at http://pblogs.bellinghamherald.com/outdoors
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