Shortened season a blow to fishermen.

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

FLORENCE - Oregon salmon fishermen said Friday that cutting the fishing season in half will not only hurt this year's profits, it will undermine their campaign to regain market share lost to farmed salmon.

"It's going to break us," said Rayburn Guerin, president of the Oregon Trollers Association.

The decision to cut the season, reached at this week's meeting in Tacoma of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, must still be approved by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries division. But there was little hope for a reprieve along the Oregon Coast.

For the Florence to Humbug Mountain stretch of the coast, the council recommended closing the chinook commercial fishery altogether for the months of June, July and August; from Florence north to Cape Falcon, the fishery would be closed in July and August. Last year, trollers could fish between March and October.

The number of fishing days will drop in the Coos Bay area from 204 to 96, in Newport from 203 to 105, according to Oregon Fish and Wildlife biologist Eric Schindler. And the minimum length of fish pulled in could jump from 27 to 28 inches, at least for this season.

The council also recommended cutbacks for sport fishermen, halting the season at July's end instead of August and reducing the quota of coho salmon from 75,000 to 40,000.

Fishermen said the closures threaten to rob them of the market share they've been able to regain after a glut of farmed salmon in the 1990s. The state's Brand Oregon campaign has funneled millions into radio, television and billboard advertisements promoting the wild fish and, in recent years, prices of wild salmon have been rising in response to consumer demand. Now, fishermen said, they won't have enough product to meet the growing consumer demand for wild fish.

That's not to mention the devastating immediate impact: watching their profit potential be sliced in half. The Oregon fleet pulled in $9.8 million last year, one of the best on record.

And the cuts in the fishing season are unnecessary, Guerin argued. "We have the largest runs in the last 50 years from the Columbia River system and the Sacramento. They're making this decision based on one year."

The cutbacks are tied to last fall's run of 4-year-old Chinook salmon in the Klamath River, where low and warm water levels have killed hundreds of thousands of juvenile fish in recent years and a debate rages about how much water the federal government allows irrigators to draw from the river.

"The federal government has promised too much water to far too many people, and has always given the priority of irrigation over fisheries. Now we're paying a huge price," said Glen Spain, northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. "It's ironic as hell, because we've got good markets and legislation that distinguishes between wild and farmed fish. But we're not going to have any fish to deliver to market."

Some fishermen say hatchery fish should be counted among the runs, as was the practice in years past. Guerin's organization is teaming up with the Klamath Basin Water Users to consider filing a lawsuit against the federal government to force the inclusion of hatchery fish. If they don't do something, farmed fish will surely step in where there isn't enough wild fish to meet consumer demand, fishermen said.

"Farmed fish are going to get their market back without lifting a finger," Guerin said. "It's pathetic."

Winston Ross can be reached at [phone] or rgcoast@ oregonfast.net.