Good price, but small fish and bycatch stymie hake fleet

摘要

The shoreside hake season got off to a rocky start in June and ended - at least temporarily — on July 5.There were plenty of fish off the West Coast, but most of them were too small for processors to sell into the food market. Plants were paying a respectable 10 cents a pound for fish 14 inches and up, but with 40 to 50 percent of many hauls coming up undersized, the price per pound to fishermen was effectively sliced in half. Boats found a few pockets of larger hake, but they were a long trek from processing plants in Oregon and southwest Washington, and also chock-full of protected canary rockfish. "We're having a lot of difficulties," said Warrenton trawler Gary Wintersteen, who was traveling 12 to 14 hours each way to get the bigger fish near the Juan de Fuca Canyon.