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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JANUARY 8, 2018
Gillnetter: ‘It’s been a keeper of memories’
Continued from Page 1A
For a young fisherman
just getting started, a gillnet
boat and gear were an invest-
ment but usually a safe one.
You could step your way up
into something bigger and if
money was tight or fishing was
bad elsewhere, seasons on the
river remained an option.
“The Columbia River
salmon fishery was not the first
non-native fishery on the West
Coast, but it has been the fore-
most,” said Hobe Kytr, direc-
tor of Salmon For All, a com-
mercial gillnetting advocacy
organization based in Astoria.
“The Columbia is the mother
of all salmon streams.”
In 2012, then-Gov. John
Kitzhaber, along with Wash-
ington state fishery managers,
put into motion a plan to phase
gillnet gear off the main stem
of the Columbia River by 2017
and replace it with other types
of gear that would, in theory,
be more selective in the fish
it caught. Oregon’s fish and
wildlife commission has since
tried to walk back from the
plan, unsuccessfully pushing
to give gillnetters back time on
the river last year.
Washington state has con-
tinued to move forward, test-
ing gear such as purse and
beach seine nets. The gillnet
fishermen said the plan would
kill their way of life. In the last
five years it has certainly taken
its toll, said Jim Wells, presi-
dent of Salmon For All.
In 2017, there was no
spring season on the main
stem, and no summer sea-
son for the first time in many
years. There were only seven
main stem openings in the fall.
To contrast, the gillnetters had
53 openings on the river main
stem in the summer and fall
in 2014, according to Wells.
An extended spring season
in off-channel areas brought
in salmon during the spring,
but not enough to build a life
around.
Photos by Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
The office of the Columbia River Fishermen’s Protective Union was full of photographs, paintings, old newspaper articles and many other items doc-
umenting the history of the fishery.
The Gillnetter
Sally the Salmon was
always on the cover of The
Gillnetter. A simple illustra-
tion, she posed seductively,
one fin on her fishy hip, the
other back against the side
of her head like a World War
II pinup. She had big, long-
lashed eyes and — to put it
politely — anatomy. And she
had opinions.
“Too many sea lions in the
Columbia River could be the
death of me!” she noted in the
2006 winter edition.
She told jokes (“Why do
some salmon develop hooked
noses? They bumped into
dams when they were young”);
she honored the memory of
deceased fishermen; she made
an argument for global warm-
ing; she said salmon are here
“for equal use and consump-
tion among all people.”
“Such a great river, the
Columbia,” she said in 2006.
“What would it be without
me?” She reminded readers
often: “I have been here to see
it all.”
Closing the Columbia
River Fishermen’s Protec-
tive Union office right before
the new year was like clos-
ing a book, one Westerholm
does not expect to open again.
Though it may not be the end
Jon Westerholm looks through old paintings and pho-
tographs while closing the office of the Columbia River
Fishermen’s Protective Union.
Boxes of index cards with information on union members and fishermen were also re-
moved from the old office by Jon Westerholm and his son, Erik.
of the union, it does mark the
end of the Gillnetter maga-
zine, as far as he can tell. Erik
Westerholm hopes they can
put out an official farewell edi-
tion, but he isn’t sure if that
will be possible.
When Don Riswick started
the magazine in 1969, the Gill-
netter was a hub for stories,
information about policies
and regulations and news. Ris-
wick passed the editorship to
Westerholm in 2003 when he
was 86 years old. He died two
years later, leaving, as Wester-
holm wrote in a tribute to the
founding editor, “a void in the
senior leadership of our fishing
industry.”
Under Westerholm’s editor-
ship, the focus of the magazine
shifted slightly, tending more
towards histories and stories
than news. Westerholm and his
contributors published opinion
pieces decrying plans to push
gillnets off the river, calling for
robust conservation efforts and
questioning the states’ plans.
“The Gillnetter was import-
ant in defining and defend-
ing the legacy of commercial
gillnetting on the Columbia
River,” Kytr said. “It’s been
the keeper of memories.”
“It’s something else,” Jon
Westerholm said, looking
around the office, a narrow
room with a door at one end
and a window at the other. He
used to be in and out just about
every other day. “We’ve been
practically living in here for
pretty close to 10 years now I
guess.”
“What it stood for,” he
mused. “How we worked
into it. Maybe it’s not quite as
important to people now as it
was to me and to people of my
age group.”
A way of life
Jack Marincovich glanced
at the front page of the day’s
newspaper, paused to look
at a photo of an Astoria high
school senior kicking a foot-
ball, flipped back and settled
down to read the obituaries.
“All our old friends are
dying,” he said.
For years Marincovich has
been the executive secretary
for the Columbia River Fish-
ermen’s Protective Union,
though these duties have
taken a back seat over the
years. He and his wife, Geor-
gia, have been vocal oppo-
nents of what became known
as the Kitzhaber Plan to phase
gillnets off the main stem of
the Columbia River. Georgia
Marincovich still bristles at the
memory of a fish and wildlife
official calling the gillnet fleet
the “mop up fishery.”
Like Westerholm, they are
part of a generation that can
remember the river’s heyday.
Jack Marincovich, 85, comes
from a long line of Croatian
Cazee: Sentencing hearing set for February
Continued from Page 1A
One of the victims, due to
repeated suspicions of some-
one prowling outside her
home, placed a surveillance
camera outside her residence
in early 2017. That camera
footage, on two occasions,
displayed a man whose face
was not visible because his
hood was up.
The man was wearing a
camouflage jacket in one of
the videos. Cazee was wear-
ing a camouflage jacket at
the time of his arrest, though
attorneys debated whether the
jacket was the same one that
appeared in the video.
Lawyers also argued about
whether the various states
of nudity in the videos war-
ranted certain charges and if
Cazee made sufficient contact
with the victim to justify the
‘You’ve got a trail of circumstances
that leads you to believe that a
certain thing happened.’
Chief Deputy District Attorney Ron Brown
stalking charges.
Ryan Colvin Connell,
Cazee’s
Hillsboro-based
attorney, pointed out that a
number of victims recalled
the peeper as being “tall and
skinny,” arguing that his cli-
ent’s appearance could not
be described as thin. He also
highlighted the fact that there
was no witness testimony or
physical evidence conclu-
sively proving that Cazee
recorded the videos.
“This case is a pretty clas-
sic example of a time when
the state is trying to make
evidence fit a specific person
as opposed to just following
the evidence,” Connell said
during closing arguments.
“When their witnesses say
there’s nothing here to say,
‘This person made this video.’
If you say he does, you’re
speculating, you’re guessing,
you’re filling in blanks that
they’re saying is not full.”
But
Brown
likened
his case to that of a child
caught at the end of a trail of
crumbs that begin at an open
cookie jar.
“You’ve got a trail of cir-
cumstances that leads you to
believe that a certain thing
happened,” Brown said.
At minimum, Cazee will
be sentenced to nearly 30
years in prison for using a
child in a sexually explicit
display. He may face more
prison time depending on
whether the sentences are
imposed concurrently or con-
secutively. A sentencing hear-
ing has been scheduled for
February.
fishermen. He started fish-
ing when he was teenager. He
fished in Alaska as well as the
Columbia River. His last trip
was in 2007 when he was 75.
He can remember when the
union included numerous fish-
ermen up and down the river.
Now he reads the obituaries,
looking for familiar names.
He hadn’t intended to be a
fisherman, he said.
“You wanted to do some-
thing else, but it was a part of
life,” he said. “It just kind of
stuck to you.”
Gillnetters now fish areas
once considered supplemen-
tary fishing grounds, off-
shoots like Youngs Bay or
Tongue Point — what the
states refer to as “select areas,”
and what Wells calls “the back
of the pipeline.”
Hundreds of sport fish-
ing and guide boats crowd
both sides of the river nearly
every day during the popular
Buoy 10 season in the sum-
mer. When the weather heats
up, shallow Youngs Bay is not
as attractive to fish and com-
mercial fishermen must also
compete with other river res-
idents, hungry sea lions and
fish-eating birds.
“You get the scraps,” Wells
said. “To think that this is
going to replace our main stem
fishery, no way.”
The commercial fishermen
believe they could and should
get a bigger slice of the fish-
ing pie. Sport fishermen can
only target so many fish, they
argue. Meanwhile, a large
number of the fish made avail-
able by state fishery manag-
ers goes uncaught. Wasted and
unavailable to the consuming
public, the commercial fisher-
men maintain.
It’s a battle the gillnetters
have been waging for years,
and one they seem no closer to
winning. The only glimmers of
hope Kytr sees are changes at
the two states’ fish and wildlife
commissions. Commissioners
who have, in the past, pushed
to move gillnetters off the river
have started to change their
minds or have been replaced
with new commissioners who
may be more sympathetic to
the gillnetters’ pleas, he said.
He is waiting to see what
the new year will bring.
Davis: ‘We think, that food
should be food, fun and family’
Continued from Page 1A
He and Villanueva, a mas-
sage therapist in Northern
California, met at Bill’s Tav-
ern & Brewhouse in Cannon
Beach, where they hatched
the idea of Table 360 on a
napkin.
“The Table 360 is repre-
sentative of what we think,
that food should be food,
fun and family,” Davis
said. “And then our tag-
line is ‘Gather, Toast, Nosh,
Repeat.’”
Table 360 will hold
a grand opening during
Second Saturday Art Walk,
featuring the oil paintings
of truck driver-turned-art-
ist Terry Freeman. The
show will also serve as a
precursor to the globe-trot-
ting bistro they want to open
in the spring.
“The landing is going to
be a lounge-like area,” Davis
said of the mezzanine over-
looking the bakery. “What
started out as a wine bar idea
has now turned into more
of a lounge of a few clas-
sic cocktails, and of course
wine pairings with cheese
and charcuterie plates. And
then the back dining room,
which is the bistro side of
it, will actually be tapas and
small plates, appetizer kind
of things.”
The bistro’s menu will
rotate every couple of
months, visiting new conti-
nents and cuisines.
“We may take you to
Africa for eight weeks,”
Davis said. “We may take
you to Spain for eight
weeks.”