Smelt Season? hope lawmakers pass a bill requiring a license to dip for the ESA-listed stock.

MD Johnson Morning, Laura. So there were seals and sea lions in the mainstem Columbia, as well as the Cowlitz, the first week of January. Good news?

Laura Heironimus In terms of our forecasting, ocean conditions look pretty good again this year for smelt, and we’re hopeful that will lead to another strong run (in 2023). Some of the indices in the ocean were good, but we also had things like warmer sea surface temperatures. So we’re not 100 percent sure, but generally the trends that we look for as they relate to smelt have been pretty good. And we had a really strong run in 2022, and we expect to see some of those cohorts coming back again this year.

MDJ Is there any reason to believe there won’t be a season in 2023 similar to the one we enjoyed in ’22?

LH It’s important to understand (our) forecast for smelt is pretty qualitative, as in we don’t have the sort of data collection needed to do really rigorous modeling for this species. And they’re (smelt) aren’t as well studied as some other species. But from what we can tell, it’s likely we’re going to have a decent run again this year, which would indicate we could start setting the commercial fisheries – and those allow for in-season monitoring and determining when a recreational fishery might happen.

MDJ I understand there’s serious talk about the creation of a smelt license. What’s the status of that development? Is the agency moving forward on that front, or can they move forward on something like that?

LH (WDFW) has proposed legislation for the state to consider that would do away with the license exemption for freshwater smelt. That’s going up for debate this year, and we’ll see if any of the legislators pick it up and support the bill. Essentially, it would remove the existing exemption for a license on freshwater smelt. It would then be up to the legislature whether they wanted to create a special license for smelt, or if they would use the standard sportfishing license requirement. If it were to go into effect, it wouldn’t go into effect this season.

Author’s note: Moreso to repeat myself so that I understand the process, this proposed legislation has to have the support of legislators, who can decide to remove the license exemption on freshwater smelt. If they do that, WDFW is then responsible for categorizing smelt within their licensing structure, i.e. special “smelt” license, required freshwater/ saltwater/combo license, or what have you, with any special instructions that might be handed down by the legislature. Sounds more complicated than it truly is.

MDJ If I can put you on a pin here,

Laura, is WDFW in favor of a socalled smelt license?

LH The department is in favor of having a license requirement because … so many people who come to this fishery aren’t familiar with the rules. As a result, we have a fishery that can get a little out of hand. In 2022, our average (smelt) bag limit – the average individual take – was higher than the legally allowed take. On average, people were harvesting a pound of fish more (11 pounds versus the legal 10 pounds) than they were legally allowed to. Not to mention we had law enforcement seize over 5,000 pounds of fish that were illegally taken, so we’re hoping that by requiring a license, it will help people understand the fishery better, as well as helping from an enforcement standpoint.

Author’s note: What Heironimus had to say next about the proposed smelt license and its connection with the fishery and this species as a whole, I believe, lies at the very foundation of what the agency is attempting to do for all recreationalists.

LH We’ve tried to be very careful when crafting our requests to say, “We don’t really care about increasing fees here. We just need to have a manageable fishery.” And so we want to get rid of the exemption, not profit from the public. By not having a license requirement on a species like smelt, which has a threatened-listing status under the ESA, and (yet still) we get this really cool opportunity for a oneor two-day fishery … we’re sending the wrong message by not having a license. We’re saying it’s OK to take as much as you want, and that’s not the message I want to send. There are rule associated with this fishery, and we need to be able to sustainably manage the fishery if we want it to continue into the future.

HEIRONIMUS WRAPPED UP our discussion on smelt by speaking of the agency’s push to improve and update the existing, albeit decades old eulachon management plan.

“The existing plan,” she began, “was written in 2001, and that was prior to the ESA listing. Unfortunately, it’s so out of date that it’s not something we can easily manage. And so we’ve (Washington and Oregon) been working hard to create an updated plan, which will outline a lot of the changes that have taken place over the past 20-plus years. It will provide a more transparent approach to what it takes to manage these fisheries, as well as provide some sort of coverage for the state if NOAA Fisheries were to develop a ‘4(d) take prohibition rule.’”

That would prohibit anyone from taking/harvesting a listed species, e.g. smelt, unless that take was associated with an approved program.

“So hopefully this will allow us that coverage so that we might continue these fisheries into the future, as well as outlining how much take we can have, depending on run size and other criteria,” Heironimus said. NS