Nez Perce set to issue gillnetting permits

The Nez Perce Tribe announced Tuesday that it will begin exercising treaty rights to authorize gillnets for catching steelhead on portions of the Snake and Clearwater rivers.

Starting this week, the tribe will begin offering up to 20 permits to tribal members for a commercial gillnetting season set to run Mondays through Fridays, until Jan. 11, followed by another season that could run through mid-April, said Joe Oatman of the tribe’s Fish and Wildlife Commission.

“We’ve had only a few individuals express interest, and they are in the process of getting gear together,” Oatman said, estimating that only about four permits are likely to be issued.

Last year, when the tribe announced a similar program for the first time, only one tribal member attempted the gillnet fishery. The season was limited to three days. “He harvested one steelhead,” Oatman said.

“This will still be more of a test fishery to figure out where we can effectively use gillnets.”

Idaho Fish and Game Department officials in Lewiston said they had no information on the tribe’s gillnetting plans.

Although the tribe’s personal subsistence and commercial gillnetting fisheries would target hatchery fish, Oatman said federal guidelines would allow the tribe to take up to 1.75 percent of the wild steelhead that come over Lower Granite Dam bound for Idaho waters.

That compares with a 3.2 percent incidental kill allowed on wild steelhead by sport fishermen, he said. Even when fish are caught on hook and line and released, scientists have determined that a certain percentage of those fish will die, he said.

Wild Snake River steelhead are protected under the Endangered Species Act.

As of Tuesday, 32,931 wild steelhead had passed Lower Granite, about 28,800 of them bound for Idaho, Oatman said.

“If we applied our percentage, we would be authorized to take up to 509 wild fish,” Oatman said, stressing that the season would be evaluated on a weekly basis.

The season would be authorized on the Snake River from Lower Granite upstream to Hells Canyon Dam and on the Clearwater “from the mouth upstream to roughly the Orofino Bridge,” he said.

In announcing the tribal steelhead fishery, tribal officials acknowledged that last year’s gillnetting season upset nontribal sportsmen.

“The fact is, there was more publicity and misinformation about the fishery than actual fish caught with gillnets,” the tribe’s news release said.

“The primary goal of the tribe is to restore and preserve the wild-natural runs of steelhead while allowing both tribal and nontribal fishermen to take advantage of the steelhead that are available for harvest,” said Samuel N. Penney, chairman of the Nez Perce tribal executive committee.