High Waters may provide low expectations for fishery

The 2007 Salmon season got underway on Tuesday, as the gillnet fishery opened up amid reports of a very muddy river and sediment causing problems for the returning salmon stocks in the early going.

The worries in the early days are that the fish will remain further away from their traditional return patterns while the waters remain cloudy and troublesome for them.

The issue was examined in a front page story in Wednesday’s Daily News.

Recent floods clouding the waters for fishing fleet
By Leanne Ritchie
The Daily News
Wednesday, June 13, 2007

The commercial salmon season got underway Tuesday with the opening of the gillnet fishery, but the forecast for the early part of the season is as murky as the waters the fish are swimming through.

Joy Thorkelson of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers' Union and a Prince Rupert city councillor, said reports are that the water in the rivers is really muddy, full of sediment because of the extra run-off created by the flood.

"They (salmon) waste a lot energy in the mud," she said. "The fish can't breath properly."
The concern is that salmon may not be behaving normally, but instead are holding in place because of the water conditions.

This could cause different concerns for different fisheries, making it easier for hook and line sports fishermen to catch the springs that are backed up and waiting to head for their spawning grounds but harder for gillnetters whose nets collect mud.

"We will have to see. If it's like this all summer, it's going to be a problem," she said.
Bert Ionson, regional resource manager for salmon for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, also said it's too early to tell how the record-level snow packs and subsequent run off will impact the salmon this year.

He said there is usually some sediment in the water when the fish begin to arrive, as the water levels increase in velocity and rise.

"The streams naturally are going to pick up some sedimentation but the flooding that has gone on has certainly exacerbated it. It's more than we normally see," he said.

And because of the flow, it is possible that salmon migration may be held up as the fish arrive at the spawning areas.

"The early ones will simply not migrate into the river but as migration timing goes on, however, they will then start to work their way in," he said.

And they do anticipate some mortality, but nothing out of the ordinary at this point.
"Some of the weaker individuals of the population just won't be able to make it to the fish spawning areas ..." Ionson said.

"Had this happened at a time when a peak abundance of fish were coming through, it might have had a stronger impact."

In the Hell's Gate region on the Fraser River, he noted they get a lot of suspended sediments coming through in a powerful fashion, with gravel one quarter of an inch in diameter.

"Fish would just get pummeled if they tried to migrate through that. What they do is they just don't migrate, they stop their migration and hold up down below these blockages in back eddies and the areas of the stream where it is not as strongly flowing until the water velocity declines," he said.

The troll fishery is also anticipating an opening for springs on Friday.