For the last two years, salmon season has been canceled along the Pacific Coast, due to severe reductions in the number of fish making their traditional runs in coastal rivers. Now, starting in Oregon, it’s happening again. Early season fishing for salmon has been closed along the Oregon coast as once again, runs of Chinook salmon are extremely low.
When the fishing bans on Pacific salmon began, some speculated that the runs were low due to a natural cycle in population levels. Could that natural low point in the cycle have lasted three years?
when i was young every fall we would hunt ruffed grouse. there was a five bird a day bag limit and we invaribly would get our limit. five birds a day, two day weekends, about a two month season, with six people in our hunting party. you do the math. this is just one family i’m talking about, exceptional hunters (maybe), but, still only one of many hunting families having similar results. over the years the bird population declined and it was said to be a cycle. i say we over-hunted and almost put the ruffed grouse on the extinction list. that supposed seven year cycle has lasted about forty years and the drum counts still are nowhere near what they were in the late sixties and early seventies.
i do not know about the fishing regulations governing the salmon, but, i suspect commercial fishing may play a big part in their decline. probably much more than the natural cycle. sport fishing is probably the least of the chinook’s problem, unlike the ruffed grouse(no commercial grouse market). so, is it only sport fishing being banned or is commercial fishing also not allowed?
at least we can still walk in our woods and hunt ruffed grouse, not much chance of bagging more than one or two per trip. i hope people will still have a chance to hook a chinook salmon in the future. maybe next year the cycle will come back around.