Shortsighted Poachers Put Future At Risk

(From Replay, June 23, 2000): Washington Fish and Wildlife Department fishing regulations list a daily catch limit of five trout in the Spokane River from Monroe Street Dam to Upriver Dam. The limit indicated in a graphic published Wednesday was incorrect.

A Spokane man who suddenly became smitten with the sport of fly fishing last year called The Spokesman-Review Outdoors Department’s Fishing Crisis Hotline to report two dramatic discoveries.

“The trout fishing in the Spokane River is amazingly good,” he said. “But there’s a serious poaching problem down there.”

He detailed how he and his brother became hooked on fishing the river shortly after being introduced to the sport. They must have had a good teacher. The angler said they treasured this uncommon resource in the middle of a city and carefully released every trout they caught.

But treasure has always attracted pirates.

“I can’t believe how many times we see people breaking the rules, fishing with bait or keeping way more trout than they’re allowed to kill,” he said.

The rules are designed so everybody can find his type of trout fishing in one of four sections on the Spokane River.

Some people are ignorant of the rules, others simply are fish thieves.

The threatening response the brothers got after confronting one group of men who were illegally bonking and stacking trout in a cooler on the lower river prompted them to report further infractions to the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department.

But the response from the department was even more chilling.

“We didn’t hear anything back at all,” he said. “We’d go back to the river and poachers would be in the same general area, again and again.”

Thus, the concerned angler began unraveling his third discovery: Spokane has not been a priority for fish and wildlife enforcement staffing in more than a decade. The state agency has skewed emphasis to Western Washington to deal with salmon issues.

Only 20 agents are assigned to the state’s 10 eastern-most counties. Factoring in court appearances and days off, only a fraction of those agents are in the field on a given day.

“Enforcement is definitely lacking east of the Cascades,” said John McColgin, a 24-year veteran wildlife enforcement agent and one of two agents assigned to Spokane County.

“Public service takes a hit with so few guys in the field,” he said. “It makes me feel bad. We’re way too busy. At the least, people deserve a call back, but I can’t always do it.”

McColgin’s interview offered insight for anglers concerned about the illegal fishing on the Spokane River.

He had just come back to work after a two-day break. His telephone message machine was filled with 16 complaints.

Of the 16 complaints, four were for cougar problems in Spokane County. “We have animal complaints that are taking more and more of our time, particularly cougar sightings and deer in orchards,” he said.

Demand like that on one agent leaves little time for checking anglers on the Spokane River.

McColgin has had to cover for two agent positions that were vacated in Spokane and Deer Park six to 10 years ago and never filled.

“Being alone poses problems for working along the Spokane River, problems you don’t see so much in the rural areas. Not that I’m a big chicken - I work alone most of the time. But you never know what you’re going to run into with drug sellers and gangs.”

That’s not surprising, but this is: “We don’t get that many complaints,” McColgin said. “We couldn’t necessarily respond to all of them if we did, but we always take note of calls and try to check them out if we can.

“I certainly don’t get to the river as much as the guys who fish it regularly. If there’s a chronic problem, they need to call us every time so we know the scope of the problem.”

In other words, a single complaint may not trigger an agent to respond. But a list of complaints may give the department justification to focus on an area.

Some anglers have more than a casual interest in protecting the river’s trout.

Mark Pinch, a member of the Inland Empire Fly Fishing Club, has spearheaded a three-year project to enhance trout in the river downstream from Monroe Street.

The Spokane real estate company executive drummed up the money and permission to stock about 190,000 rainbows in the lower river in the past three years. Now that rainbows are establishing in some areas where they had previously been fished out, the state is looking into stocking brown trout to fill other niches in the river.

Anglers who want to catch fish to eat can walk a few blocks upstream, where the rules allow them to keep five trout a day from Monroe Street Dam to Upriver Dam.

Anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000 trout are stocked in the Riverfront Park area each year, Washington Fish and Wildlife Department records show. These fish are stocked for anglers to catch and keep.

“The idea is to encourage anglers to take lots of fish from the middle section of the river while restricting the catch in the lower river and upper section,” Pinch said.

“There’s a lot of good unused fish habitat in the lower river. Lots of big rocks, rubble and gravel. It’s tremendous water quality considering it’s in the middle of an urban area. That’s why we want to give trout a chance there.

“It’s fed by Hangman Creek and it gets a tremendous recharge from the aquifer to keep the temperatures moderated.

“The club stepped up to help provide a quality urban fishery. But without enforcement, we lose tremendous numbers of fish. These rainbows have an instinct to eventually swim downstream toward the Columbia. We don’t want to hit them over the head before they can spawn and naturally produce fish for us to catch right here in Spokane.”