WDFW Steelhead Creel Protocol for Lower Columbia River Tributaries, 2014 – 2017

The mission of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is to preserve, protect and perpetuate fish, wildlife, and ecosystems while providing sustainable fish and wildlife recreational and commercial opportunities. Specifically in the lower Columbia River (LCR), WDFW's goal is to recover populations of steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss), which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in the LCR distinct population segment (DPS), while simultaneously managing rivers for recreational fishing opportunities through harvest of hatchery fish and some catch and release (i.e., non-retention) of wild fish. To meet these goals, WDFW must maintain the impacts these fisheries have on wild stocks of steelhead within levels authorized by Fisheries Management and Evaluation Plans (FMEP). By achieving this, the rebuilding of wild stocks can progress and fishing opportunity can be maximized. Therefore, WDFW is using angler surveys to monitor the impacts recreational fisheries have on wild stocks of steelhead in the LCR.

As recreational angling has increased in popularity over time, angler surveys have become an established method to estimate fishing pressure and catch. Angler surveys generally fall into two categories: (1) "on-site" surveys such as roving creels and (2) "off-site" surveys such as phone interviews or catch cards. The advantages of estimating catch through on-site creel surveys is that the data collection is almost instantaneous and does not suffer from the vagaries of anglers' memory and knowledge relative to off-site methods. Additionally, creel surveys can provide information on angler effort, catch rates, fishing location, gear type, hooking location, and other biological information from harvested fish. A disadvantage of creel surveys is that they are typically more expensive to conduct than off-site collection methods.

Over the last fifty years, WDFW has been using an annual, off-site Catch Record Card (CRC) system to monitor the impacts of recreational steelhead fisheries in the LCR. However, the CRC system is only focused on capturing catch information from retention fisheries. Thus, the CRC system does not currently provide scientific information needed to assess risk to wild steelhead populations posed by their handle in both indirect fisheries targeting hatchery steelhead and directed (catch and release) fisheries targeting wild steelhead. In order to fill this data void, WDFW began implementing steelhead creel surveys in LCR tributaries and has developed a plan for continued implementation on a three-year rotating basis.

Overall, the specific objectives of the steelhead creel surveys in the LCR are to: (1) Quantify monthly, seasonal (summer and winter), and yearly patterns of effort and catch for hatchery and wild steelhead using creel surveys; (2) Compare CRC and creel estimates of hatchery catch and determine the feasibility of using CRC estimates of hatchery catch to estimate wild catch based on relative handle rates in co-mingled fisheries; and (3) Estimate wild population impact rates resulting from non-retention sport fisheries (i.e., hooking mortality) as well as determining the relationship between gear type and hooking location for use in studies of non-retention mortality.