At the turn of the last century around 1900, commercial fishing was probably at its peak, in the Astoria area alone there was estimated to be roughly 200 canneries whose sole purpose was to put salmon in a can. There were times when you could nearly walk across the estuary on commercial boats, and this did not include beach seines or fish wheels that sometimes were in place year around and fished 24-7. It was from these early days of commercial fishing that the need for hatcheries were born.
By 1920 some stocks of wild fish on the Columbia River were already gone, the original June hog which was a run of salmon native to the Columbia River that exceeded weights of 80 pounds and more were gone. During this time we had a global population of under 2 billion people, but already the worlds desire for salmon was threatening wild stocks, as the demand went up, wild stock depleted more, and hatcheries ramped up production, until the entire salmon business was hatchery dependent.
Now as you can see, nowhere in this article have I mentioned the word "Sportsman", that's because sportsman, or what we call sportsman today didn't evolve until sometime much later. You see, hatcheries were not meant to subsidize sport fishing, they were a need to produce fish to meet the ever growing world population who wanted salmon on their local diners menu. Today we have a world population about to reach 9 billion, we live in an age today where fish in general can be caught one day and on the plate of a consumer halfway around the globe the following day, Ive personally seen a 30lb spring Chinook in Seattle's Pikes Place Market for $1000... that's right..... A GRAND!
A recent battle was fought by anglers looking to put more salmon on rods and punch cards, that was to take commercial fishing nets off the mainstream of the Columbia River and limit them to sloughs and bays, this seemed like a great idea and in many ways it was, it would limit the impact on wild fish as well as steelhead, but that may not have worked in our favor as much as we had hoped. One such example of this is the Youngs bay fishery. The Youngs Bay fishery is based around salmon that have been raised in a net pen, what separates net pen fish from those released in a tributary is after these fish return from their journey in the ocean and come back to spawn they have no "home stream" to return to, so instead they return to Youngs Bay where they just swim around while waiting to be caught, sounds like a great idea in theory right?.....No! Here's the back lash in that. We'll use the Kalama River hatchery as an example. The Kalama River raises some 7 million fall Chinook that use to return to the Kalama River, we as anglers started catching those fish when the first of the ocean season opened and had continued opportunity to do so as they migrated up the Columbia and into the Kalama, then after the fish would spawn they were a perfect nutrient enhancement for the ENTIRE Kalama ecosystem. But now even though they that hatchery still may raise 7 million smolts , 6 million of those are trucked to Youngs Bay to imprinted so when they return the go no further and swim around till they are harvested, mostly by commercial fisherman. So getting commercial fisherman off the mainstream of the Columbia was a backfire, it limited our fishing opportunities, and keeps less hatchery fish from entering the tributaries which appeases groups such as Wild Fish Society who are against hatcheries in general.
I DO AGREE that the practice of gill netting is an antiquated and very destructive way of fishing, the mortality rate on threatened species is horrible and there needs to be a better solution but my fear is this..... If we remove commercial fishing from the Columbia River we're going to lose sport fishing, as well, as I mentioned earlier hatcheries were implemented to support the impact of commercial fish, not sports fishing. Last year in the state of Washington commercial fisherman put 3 billion dollars into the states coffers while sport fishing contributed 1 billion, and since the job of raising hatchery fish is in the hands of the state its easy to see who they are more eager to listen to.
I can honestly say I have no idea what the answer is, yes it would be wonderful to see commercial fishing gone, hatcheries ramp up production, and we live in a salmon and steelhead utopia, but lets all agree, that's not going to happen, again we live on a planet with 9 billion people that's soon to jump to 11 billion, who all want to eat fish. Jacques Couestou (forgive me on the spelling) once said this planet can not support any more than 500 million people, he was a man who knew our oceans better than maybe anyone before and possibly since, maybe he was right......
