Landers: Doubling Roosevelt trout limit could preserve wild redbands
The limit for catching hatchery rainbow trout may be raised from five to 10 fish a day.
There’s no catch to the cooler-filling catch plan, except that most native fish anglers hook will have to be released.
Wild fish conservation has never been packaged more deliciously than this. The plan might even create legal fishermen out of poachers who ignore the current limit.
A petition calls for changing the rainbow trout harvest regulation to a “daily limit of 10 adipose-absent trout, no size limit; daily limit of 1 adipose-present trout 18 inches or greater.”
All unclipped trout under 18 inches long would have to be released.
The current daily limit in Lake Roosevelt is five trout, up to two of which can be over 20 inches. The trout limit can include both wild and fin-clipped fish.
The proposal also would close trout fishing in the Sanpoil River Arm from Feb. 1 through May 30 and at the mouth of Onion and Big Sheep creeks March 1-May 30. The closure areas may generate the most debate.
The petition is authored by Randall Friedlander of the Colville Confederated Tribes Fish and Wildlife Department, which co-manages the Lake Roosevelt fishery with the Spokane Tribe and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The state Fish and Wildlife Commission is scheduled to vote on the proposal during a conference all on March 4. If approved, the rule would take effect on July 1.
Chris Donley, the state’s Spokane Region fisheries manager, said he supports the proposal, although he doesn’t agree with the full range of wild fish threats that tribal researchers are attributing to sport fishing.
“What I do agree with is that wild trout anywhere, especially wild native trout, are a rare commodity and that alone is good reason to not harvest many of them, especially when we have hundreds of thousands of hatchery fish out there for anglers to catch and keep.”
The Columbia River redband trout is a subspecies of rainbow trout found east of the Cascade Mountains in the Columbia River and its tributaries in Montana, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. A 2012 review estimated that resident redbands occupy only 27 percent of their historic range.
Current state fishing regulations for Lake Roosevelt, including the Spokane River below Little Falls Dam, do not distinguish between wild redband trout.
A limit can include any number of wild fish or the 750,000 coastal rainbow trout that originate from hatcheries and are raised in net pens before being released into the lake each year.
However, anglers can easily make the distinction since the adipose fins are clipped off the sterile (triploid) hatchery-produced fish.
In 2011, the state took a step toward protecting wild fish by enacting bubble closures for three Columbia tributaries near Northport – Onion, Big Sheep and Deep Creeks – to protect staging pre-spawn redbands.
For its own part, the Colville Tribe, starting in 2005, closed trout fishing in all tributaries that flow into the Sanpoil River.
Redband trout spawning has been observed in at least 20 tributaries to Lake Roosevelt. The largest run is into the Sanpoil, where 3,000-5,000 fish return to spawn each year.
Anglers with an eye for the future should note that a portion of the Sanpoil River fish return in fall and over winter before spawning in spring – similar to a steelhead’s life history.
Roughly 2 percent of the juvenile redband trout from several tributaries appear to be smolting and migrating downstream – as far as the mouth of the Columbia – based on tagging data. These fish may be attempting to express an anadromous life history, Friedlander said.
In other words, these fish are likely genetically intact remnants of steelhead that ran the river before Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams blocked their historic migrations.
The proposed change in catch limits wouldn’t be a burden to anglers.
The majority (84 percent) of the redband trout harvested by anglers are less than 20 inches long. (The largest measured by creel surveyors was 22.8 inches. Research suggest the maximum length a wild fish could reach would be about 30 inches.)
But most anglers don’t catch more than one wild redband in their current daily trout limit.
About 66 percent of the Lake Roosevelt redbands die each year, one way or another. That number can be reduced if anglers can kill no more than one wild fish, minimum size 18 inches, in a daily limit, Friedlander said.
Sure, some of the smaller wild fish will die after being caught and released.
“Hooking mortality has been extensively studied on resident trout species, often with confounding results,” he said, noting that the overall average mortality rate from 18 studies surveyed – using all types of gear – was 12 percent. Under the best conditions, with barbless flies or lures, the percentage dropped to 3 percent.
But releasing wild fish would be a significant benefit.
Between 2012 and 2014, researchers estimate 3,825 redband trout were harvested on Lake Roosevelt.
If anglers were allowed to keep only one trout over 18 inches, mortality would be reduced by 61 percent, plus 12 percent hooking mortality for a total angler mortality of 1,671 fish.
Increasing the limit for hatchery rainbows would allow anglers to easily make up for releasing wild fish, especially in high catch-rate periods.
The proposed rules would help ensure long-term sustainability of all genetic gene pools within Lake Roosevelt, Friedlander said.
“At the same time, we’d be giving anglers a better chance to catch our harvest goal of 100,000-150,000 of the 750,000 net-pen hatchery fish,” Donley said. “We’ve never reached that goal.”
“Lake Roosevelt holds a really healthy, robust, genetically diverse population of wild redbands that don’t exist anywhere on the planet except there,” he said. “They’re definitely worth preserving.”
Contact Rich Landers at (509)459-5508 or email richl@spokesman.com.