Will this solution actually get to the bottom of the problem?

Byline: Mike Stahlberg / The Register-Guard

A NEW RULE regarding yelloweye rockfish has some deep-sea fishermen seeing red.

Among them is Richard Starr of Marcola, who keeps a boat moored in Newport six months a year to facilitate frequent ocean fishing trips.

Starr and several of his fishing buddies are upset over a new provision in the Oregon Angling Regulations that prohibits sport anglers from having yelloweye rockfish and Pacific Halibut on board the same vessel during the all-depth halibut season.

The rule was adopted by the Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC) for 2002 in an attempt to reduce the sport harvest of yelloweye, which are at 10 to 20 percent of their historic population levels.

"I really think this is a sick idea they've got here," Starr said. "They can't be fishermen and not know that when you bring a yelloweye up, it's dead."

For the uninitiated, the yelloweye is an orange-colored denizen of the deep with pink fins and bright yellow eyes. It also has an air bladder that bursts because of the rapid change in pressure when it is reeled to the surface.

"They fight like hell until you get them about 50 feet off the bottom, then the air bladder explodes and they're dead," Starr said.

His complaint with the new rule is that it will lead to wasting fish.

Starr said he and his buddies often catch yelloweye rockfish while fishing for halibut at the "Chicken Ranch," an area of ocean about 35 miles west of Newport that is popular with deep-sea fishermen.

"On our last trip, we caught five halibut, five yelloweye, two lingcod and two sablefish during one mile-and-a-quarter drift using identical bait hookups and fishing at a depth of 500 feet," Starr said.

Last year, each angler was allowed one yelloweye and one halibut per day. This year, the boat will have to chose between one species or the other.

While yelloweye make tasty eating, Starr said, there's no doubt which fish will go over the side.

"There's not going to be too many sport fishermen who go 35 miles out there and catch one yelloweye and say, 'I guess we can't keep any halibut today.' '

Starr's experience tells him halibut and yelloweye frequently inhabit the same waters.

Fishery biologists, however, insist halibut and yelloweye generally do not share the same habitat.

"Halibut do not like reef areas," said Don Bodenmiller, a biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's Marine Region office in Newport.

Bodenmiller said banning yelloweye and halibut in the same fishbox was seen as a means of discouraging halibut anglers en route back to port from stopping to fish deep-sea reefs where yelloweye are found.

About 17 percent of last year's sport harvest of yelloweye occurred during the nine days that halibut fishing was allowed outside the 20 fathom line, Bodenmiller said.

A 25 percent reduction in the sport harvest of yelloweye rockfish in 2002 is the goal of the PFMC. About 5.3 metric tons (or roughly 2,800 fish) were landed in 2001.

All bottom-fishing enthusiasts have a vested interest in seeing that goal met. If the yelloweye harvest does not show evidence of a significant drop by late summer, the PFMC said it will order a midseason shutdown of all recreational jigging for bottom fish outside the 20 fathom line.

That would force recreational anglers to fish in waters no more than 120 feet deep, where yelloweye are seldom found. Such a move, however, could lead to even higher catches of black rockfish, whose stocks are also becoming depleted. That, in turn, could lead to still further reductions in bottom-fishing opportunities.

Reducing the deep-sea, bottom-fishing season - which, in Oregon, has always been "year-round, weather permitting" - was discussed by the PFMC as an alternative way to reduce the harvest.

But Oregon charter boat operators convinced the council they could significantly reduce their customers' catch of yelloweye by changing where and how they jig. Electronic gear helps them target clouds of fish suspended above the bottom, which are more likely to be other species of rockfish. Lighter gear and weights can help keep a jig from getting all the way to the bottom where yelloweye hang out.

And if customers begin catching yelloweye in spite of those measures, the charter fleet representatives said, captains can simply move their boat.

"We had somewhat of a similar situation with canary rockfish, and people were able to avoid them pretty well," Bodenmiller said. "If they get into a school of canary rockfish, they move. We're hoping they'll do the same thing with yelloweye."

Charter boats account for fully 70 percent of the sport rockfish harvest in Oregon waters, so the council agreed to give the industry's plan a try, with the threat of a midyear closure as a backup.

The ODFW will use dockside creel checks and interviews to monitor the impact on yelloweye.

Starr, meanwhile, said he would prefer a shorter season to a system that encourages wasting fish.

Bodenmiller said he hopes to help minimize wastage by meeting outgoing halibut fishermen at the docks and "handing out flyers asking people to avoid fishing the deep-water reef areas."

Mike Stahlberg is the Register-Guard's outdoor writer. He can be reached at [e-mail].