SPOrT FISHIng regulaTIOnS - Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife

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Take Someone Fishing In 2013
I’m excited about fishing in
Oregon. Whether you’re
hooking salmon, steelhead,
trout, bass, halibut or tuna,
casting from the bank or a
20-foot sled, or fishing for the
freezer or for fun, Oregonians
have some of the most diverse
and dynamic fishing
opportunities of any state in the
country.
At ODFW, we’re encouraging more people to be a part
of Oregon’s angling community. One of our priorities in
recent years has been to encourage more people to
start and continue fishing. Recruiting and retaining
anglers is not a new idea, but in the past few years
we’ve developed new products and programs that are
more strategic, more efficient and, we hope, more
successful. For example, we’ve:
• Re-vamped our Youth Fishing Events to include the
entire family. The Family Fishing program
recognizes that kids don’t take themselves fishing,
parents take kids fishing.
• Increased recruitment of adult anglers (because
you shouldn’t have to “have kids” to learn how to
fish) through more fishing, clamming and crabbing
classes, and through how-to publications to help
them get started.
• Moved Free Fishing Weekend to the full first
weekend in June so it aligns with Oregon State
Parks Day, National Fishing and Boating Week,
National Trails day, and other activities to
encourage outdoor recreation. This will help us
stretch our marketing resources by partnering with
other agencies, and to remind people to take a rod
with them when they go camping, hiking or boating.
• Partnered with industry and retailers to promote
fisheries like Columbia River steelhead or events
like Free Fishing Weekend.
• Focused on fishing close to home. Researchers
have found the lack of time is the number one
barrier to fishing, so why not remind folks they don’t
have to travel far to go fishing? Our popular 50
Places to Fish . . . series lists great places to go
fishing within 60 or 90 minutes of Portland, Bend,
Medford and Roseburg. If this list doesn’t include
your neighborhood, we’ve got more on the way.
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
• Made it easier to find the places we’ve stocked
trout. We stock over 7 million trout each year and
new Google maps make it easy for anglers to get to
where the fish are.
At the same time we’re encouraging Oregonians to get
out and fish, we’re putting boots on the ground to make
sure they have great places to go fishing. Many of these
projects received support from the Fish Restoration and
Enhancement Program, funded by a surcharge on
fishing licenses. In 2012, the program spent $689,000
on 17 different projects to improve fishing access and
opportunities. These included improvements to local
fishing ponds in Grant, Multnomah, Union, Tillamook,
Jefferson and Marion counties – five of these projects
provided ADA approved access for anglers with
disabilities.
But as committed as we are to recruiting and retaining
anglers, we know the best way to get people out fishing
is through other anglers. So what can you do?
• TAKE SOMEONE FISHING. It can be a buddy, a
spouse, a child, a new member of your fishing club.
Your passion and enthusiasm for fishing is the most
effective recruitment tool we have.
• Consider becoming an Angling Education
Instructor. Each year our volunteer instructors teach
thousands of youths and adults how to bait a hook,
cast a line and land a fish.
• Volunteer to help improve a fishery by helping to
restore habitat or build a new dock. Join the
hundreds of volunteers in the Salmon Trout
Enhancement Program (STEP) who each year
donate approximately $3 million in labor to help
restore and enhance fishing in Oregon.
I hope you find great fishing in 2013. Let’s continue to
work together to build great fisheries and to get some
new faces on the water.
Tight lines,
Roy Elicker, Director
All trout, salmon and steelhead that are released must be unharmed and should not
be removed from the water.