HIGH HOPES FOR BOTTOMFISH

It’s too early to say if the Northwest Coast will see last April’s weather-blessed “off the hook” bottomfishing, but two things are for sure in 2022: Plenty of boats will head out of harbors from Westport to Astoria, and from Garibaldi to Gold Beach and beyond, and many big lingcod – like this 33-pounder Andy Anderson caught in very shallow waters – and lots of black rockfish will be brought back to port. (BRIAN MCLACHLAN)

FISHING

High Hopes For Bottomfish ‘I think anglers are in for a pretty good season’ – coastal manager on 2022’s fishery.

By MD Johnson

Allow me, first rattle out of the box, to make a confession. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been this giggly. I’m talking 13-year-old-waiting-for-theopening-day-of-duck-season giggly. Or 40-something-and-the-Iowaturkey-season-opener giggly. Yes, sir. Either one or both. Plenty giggly.

Of what, you’re wondering, do I speak this time? Well, March 12, of course, otherwise known as Washington’s coastal bottomfish opener. Oregonians, you don’t know the feeling, seeing as y’all enjoy a year-round season for rockfish and lingcod. But us Evergreen Staters, it’s just a little bit different, what with the mid-October closure and those long seemingly endless days until the second Saturday in March.

But, and as I write this, those of us above the Columbia River have less than a month to wait. All of us, though, whether we’re north or south of the Big River, are getting ready; ready for the opener. Ready for the weather to straighten up. Ready for that new rod, reel and box filled with new baits. And, almost without exception, ready to know what we anglers might expect when we hit the water this spring and drop that first 6-inch grub down amongst the rocks.

Fortunately for those of us with the bottomfish itch, there are folks who enjoy an inside track in terms of what we anglers might see. Heather Hall serves as the Intergovernmental Ocean Policy Manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, where she focuses her efforts “primarily on the West Coast fisheries” managed mostly through the Pacific Fishery Management Council for groundfish. Under a second hat, Hall manages Washington’s halibut fisheries, while a third sees her holding a policy role with the Coastal Dungeness Crab Fishery. “So,” she said, “I cover a nice variety of fisheries for the state.”

On the opposite side of the Columbia, Hall’s Oregon counterpart and colleague, Lynn Mattes, similarly has her hands full. “I’m the project leader for recreational groundfish and halibut with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife,” she began. “That means I handle the management of the recreational halibut fishery, along with the recreational groundfish fishery.”

Before we get started looking at the 2022 season, let’s circle back to

Using the slow-pitch jigging method he outlined in last March’s issue, Jerry Han (right) and Jon Crawford enjoyed a really good bottomfishing trip to Brookings. (FISHING PHOTO CONTEST)

READY FOR THE JETTY

Along with some turkey material – yes! It’s time again! – next month, I’m going to take a look at our opener on the Columbia River’s North Jetty. I’ve already received delivery of two new rod/reel combinations – Shakespeare Ugly Stik Salmon/Steelhead 8-footers and Pflueger President 40s – and my wife Julie’s been itching to have a go with her Christmas present, an Okuma SST 8-foot-6 MediumHeavy matched to an Ambassadeur 5500. I’m also planning to test drive a pair of Virtual Fishing Rods from Abu Garcia (abugarcia.com). They’re pretty high-tech for me – note: they connect to an app on your smartphone via Bluetooth, recording each catch and collecting information regarding location, date, time, conditions, species, what you had for lunch, and on and on. The rods themselves are incredibly sensitive; however, I fear a big sea bass or nasty 30-pound lingcod might prove quite the match for a 7-foot medium-weight spinning rod. We’ll see, won’t we?

I did invest in some new soft baits to try this season, thank you very much, YouTube. The WildEye Swim Shad from Storm Lures is allegedly the bomb when it comes to sea bass, so we’ll see how that one works. Look for a full report in the April issue. –MDJ a conversation I had with Mattes at this time last year, and talk about bottomfish in general; specifically, what constitutes a bottomfish? Are all bottomfish rockfish? What exactly are groundfish? And where do lingcod fall on this aquatic family tree, if indeed there is any relationship whatsoever?

“Rockfish are a subset of bottomfish, and the terms bottomfish and groundfish get used interchangeably,” Mattes explained. “It’s sort of a catch-all category for things that aren’t salmon and aren’t tuna and aren’t halibut. Everything else gets lumped into this category called groundfish or bottomfish.”

Mattes went on to say that of the approximately 100 species of groundfish found off the Oregon and Washington coasts, about 60 of them are rockfish that, generally speaking, are found near or on rocks and exhibit a bass-like shape, hence black rockfish are often called black sea bass, or simply sea bass. Lingcod, Mattes’ tutorial continued, are a bottomfish, but not kin to rockfish.

“They’re an entirely different family,” she pointed out. Interestingly – at least to me – a lingcod is neither a ling (an eel-like fish found in the Gulf of Mexico) nor a cod, like a burbot.

Indeed, you learn interesting things talking to fish managers. Speaking of ...

Northwest Sportsman Monitoring and

season setting. How do fisheries get the information they need to make decisions about a resource like bottomfish? Heather Hall Through the (Pacific Fishery Management Council), the (Northwest Fisheries) Science Center, and stock assessment teams on the West Coast, assessments for groundfish species, including lingcod, are done, and then we (WDFW) use those assessments, which establish harvest levels for us, to manage the resource to those harvest levels. We have samplers in place – those are the folks who interview anglers when they return

Some 287,000 black rockfish were landed in Oregon in 2019, followed by 50,000 lings. The overall bottomfish fishery contributed $17 million to coastal economies, with Newport, where this panorama snippet was taken, accounting for nearly a quarter of angler effort. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)

from fishing – and we’re combining (that information) with estimates of (fishing) effort to get our catch data.

NWS Overall, what’s the status of the bottomfish population off the Oregon Coast? Lynn Mattes For most species, we’re in really good shape. The lingcod population is really healthy. Most of our rockfish populations are really healthy. Yelloweye rockfish, which has been our main overfished species since 2004, is rebuilding a little bit. When I first started this job in 2008, that population was expected to rebuild by 2084; now, it’s projected to rebuild in something like 2029. All the efforts and all the sacrifices that recreational and commercial anglers have made by avoiding yelloweye for the past 20 years has had a (positive) impact. We still have to be careful with yelloweye, though. Author’s note: Mattes continued, this time with a different member of the rockfish family. LM We got a new assessment on quillback rockfish in 2021, and the assessment showed that quillback, while a healthy stock … the total biomass, the scale of the fish that are out there, has decreased quite a bit … to the point that the amount we can (safely) harvest and not further increase the stock has also decreased greatly. To stay within the amount we can impact without harming the overall population, starting this year, the state of Oregon has gone to no retention of quillback rockfish for both the recreational and commercial fisheries.

NWS Both Washington and Oregon saw some positive regulatory changes in 2021 pertaining to bottomfish, particularly in where anglers may or may not fish based on “fathom lines,” or water depths. Did these changes have an effect on harvest and/or angling pressure? HH We saw, I think, exactly what we expected to see. People were really excited to access some of these deep-water lingcod areas off our (Washington) coast. And when they were out there fishing for these deep-water lingcod, they found more canary rockfish. There were two little areas off Westport that we opened for the first time since 2011, and a lot of people fished in those areas with good success. So, we did see a higher catch of canary rockfish, but harvest stayed within our prescribed levels. These opportunities were especially important to anglers, given an albacore season that wasn’t that great, and a Washington salmon season that closed a bit earlier. LM With yelloweye stocks getting better, we’ve been allowed some more (bycatch mortality) impacts. We weren’t able to allow any retention yet, but with those additional mortality impacts, we have been able to open up an additional month of “all-depth” fishing. Last year, June, July and August were restricted to inside of the 40-fathom line; this year, it’s only going to be July and August. So, the all-depth fishery runs through June and starts up again in September. We’ve been taking a precautionary approach, as we’ve been getting a few more yelloweye to work with, on reopening the bottomfish fishery to all-depths. Just three or four years ago,

it was April through September that was limited to (inside) 40 fathoms, and now it’s just July and August.

NWS What did bottomfish anglers think about the fishery in 2021? Satisfied? Grumpy as only disgruntled anglers can be? Any changes people need to be aware of for ’22? HH I would say they were satisfied. And as far as regulatory changes (in Washington waters) for 2022, it should look much the same as 2021. LM For the most part … yeah, people were happy. In Oregon, our goal is to keep our bottomfish fishery open yearround, and we were able to do that.

We did have to take some inseason action to reduce our impacts to quillbacks, along with copper and China rockfish. We were going to hit the quotas for those. April last year was just off the hook. The weather was awesome. We had July/August fishing effort in April because it was so nice. So we saw that huge burst of effort and catches in April, and to make sure we could stay open year-round, we did back off the (daily) bag limit by one fish. We had increased it to six daily on January 1, but with that explosion of effort in April, we thought it best if we went back down to five to ensure the fishery being open the entire year.

From what I heard, a lot of anglers were happy with their experiences in 2021.

NWS Crystal ball time! What are the predictions for the 2022 bottomfish season? A repeat? A downer? More midseason changes? Good? Bad? Ugly? HH I expect this season to be very similar to last year. Hopefully, it will be good and provide a good start to the season. We’re starting to recover from 2020 and the pandemic situation. Things are starting to look more “back to normal,” so I’m hoping it’s going to be a good bottomfish season here. LM It’s so weather-dependent, as I know you know. I think there’s going to be great opportunities. If effort is like the last several years, we should be able to keep the season open yearround. We’ll be keeping a close eye on copper and China rockfish, which we do have a one-fish sub-bag limit. Author’s note: That means, for those unfamiliar, that only one fish of your fivefish daily bag limit may be either a copper or China rockfish.

End of May or early June, and we may have to go to nonretention of those species. But I expect most everything else to run through the end of the year. A lot will depend on some other opportunities. We’re hearing that the coho season this year could be really good again, and that does take some pressure off the rockfish. Also, tuna opportunities in the summer. That can draw a lot of anglers away from bottomfish. But I think anglers are in for a pretty good season. NS