Salmon fishing is no cure for seasickness

N.S. NOKKENTVED

Originally published September 4, 2001

This summer I happened to wind up on a fishing boat heading out of Westport with several officials of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

They were there to fish, and I was there to report on the fishing. They did well, catching the limit of coho and chinook salmon.

I didn't fare so well.

The Fish and Wildlife guys wanted to see first-hand what all the fishermen and women -- to say nothing of the charter-boat owners -- were in a stir about.

And the stir was about abundant salmon -- catchable salmon. A hatchery program that marks most of the hatchery-raised coho salmon allows anglers to fish and release the easily identifiable wild salmon by the presence of an adipose fin -- a small fin between the tail and the larger dorsal fin.

Simply put, the program means anglers can fish for salmon without putting undue pressure on wild fish. And more salmon have turned up in coastal water off Washington this summer than in many years.

Most of them are hatchery fish, a poor second cousin to the wild fish that still are very much in danger of disappearing. But they still are popular with anglers and good eating.

A few wild fish get caught by sport fishers, and some die as a result. Critics say as long as some salmon are endangered, all fishing for them should stop.

Maybe.

Others say if salmon go extinct, it would be because of the vast numbers that die in the industrialized Snake and Columbia rivers -- not because anglers catch a few fish in the ocean and on the rivers.

Politics aside, it was a beautiful, sunny day and the sea, though choppy, was not rough. And the fishing was good.

I, however, didn't fare so well. I have been to sea in some pretty rough weather. I spent a year aboard a destroyer in the Pacific and endured some of the worst weather the North Atlantic can muster without so much as getting queasy. So it's with some embarrassment that I confess, I got queasy on this trip -- a touch of the Westport flu -- and in calm weather.

We crossed the Westport bar without incident. But once in the fishing area about 12 miles out, the boat stopped and began bobbing in the choppy swell.

I was OK until I tried to take notes. But I was out there to report on the opening of salmon fishing and why the fish were coming back in such numbers.

And we soon learned that all the talk was true. On the boat's fish finder we could see large schools of "bait fish" -- herring, anchovies and sardines -- that the salmon feed on below the boat.

The salmon, stocking up for arduous journeys up their natal streams to spawn, began biting almost as soon as the bait went over the side. Fishing with barbless hooks, the anglers quickly released the wild fish. And soon everyone had their two-fish limit.

I started to feel better about the time the fishing was done and we turned back toward Westport.

That night, back on firm ground, I sampled the day's catch -- filleted and barbecued with lemon, dill and juniper berries and washed down with a with a glass of chilled Johannesburg Riesling.

Life is good.

N.S. Nokkentved, who is content to eat store-bought salmon, covers the outdoors for The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-5445.

The Olympian Copyright 2001

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