SKAMOKAWA — Larry Holland and two helpers dug their feet into the sand and pulled with all their might on a fishing seine net that looped into the Columbia River.

Then Holland, a commercial fishermen who lives in Cathlamet, hopped on an ATV for some extra pulling power to haul the seine towards shore. After about 15 minutes of effort, Holland, his crew and Department of Fish and Wildlife employees counted the catch of exactly one coho.

A subsequent set of the net yielded nothing, though the netters have gotten 70 salmon per set of the net on other days.

Measuring the effectiveness of beach seines, along with purse seines and a device called a Merwin trap is the goal of a $400,000 study underway on the lower Columbia.

Depending on the study’s results, Columbia River commercial fishermen might some day switch from the gillnets they now use to seines or traps.

Alternatives to gillnets are getting more attention as fishery managers try to increase the catch of hatchery salmon so they don’t compete with wild salmon listed under the Endangered Species Act. At the same time, biologists want to minimizing mortality of wild fish that are caught and released.

For more than 50 years, Columbia River commercial fishermen have used only gillnets, which have a mesh size ranging from six to nine inches and trap fish by the gills. Gillnets must be hauled on board boats before the fish can be removed. By that time, fish that must be released may be injured too badly to survive.

The current study examines three types of nets which are gentler on fish. Seines have a 3 1/2 inch mesh and fish can be examined while still in the water.

“All of these are live-capture so you can release wild fish,” said Eric Kinne, a DFW biologist.

Some of the fish caught are being marked with tags so their movement can be monitored, though all are being returned to the water.

Until a few days ago, Holland and his crew used muscle power to haul in the beach seine, which is 660 feet long and 30 feet deep. “When the tide’s moving fast, it’s hard,” said Brad Hilferty, a commercial fisherman from Astoria.

So the crew started ferrying an ATV across the river in a skiff to the seining beach on Welch Island. (A century ago, horses pulled beach seines onto Columbia River shores.)

Though beach seining requires only a relatively simple skiff and net, it has its disadvantages. For one thing, it requires a stretch of smooth shore without underwater debris that would snag the net.

Holland pointed out that he had to hire two crew members for the beach seine, though most Columbia River gillnetters work alone. And beach seining is impossible with some tides, he said.

“I don’t know if beach seining is going to work,” Holland said.

A few hundred yards offshore from the beach seine, another crew swarmed over a purse seine boat skippered by John McKinley of Skamokawa.

A skiff pulled the purse seine, which is 650 feet long and 30 feet deep, out in a circle. The net was drawn in, trapping fish in a small area from which they could be snatched with a dip net.

In five sets of the purse seine Monday, the crew caught 20 chinook, 21 coho and one steelhead. The net has caught as many as 100 fish per set, Kinne said.

Kent Martin, a commercial fishermen from Skamokawa who isn’t involved in the current net research, said purse seining is used in Puget Sound to catch sockeye, pink and chum salmon.

Puget Sound fishing waters are much deeper than the Columbia, where catching nets on the river bottom is a problem, Martin said.

Holland said a purse seine boat would cost at least $100,000 to buy and perhaps $10,000 a year to insure. Purse seining requires a crew of at least four.

“It’s going to be tough to ever break even,” Holland said.

Columbia River purse seiners would have to catch many more fish per day than gillnetters to make a profit, Martin said.

Farther downstream, the WDFW is also evaluating a Merwin trap, a floating device similar to a catamaran. A funnel-shaped net suspended below directs fish into a trap.

“We’ve been modifying it as we go,” Kinne said. “It hasn’t worked really well yet.”

Though fish traps were used on the Columbia in the early 1900s, Martin said he doubts they’d be feasible these days. They’re easily fouled with grass and slime that wasn’t present a century ago, he said.

And just like the ladder at Bonneville Dam, fish traps attract marine mammals. “They used to shoot seals that would go right in to the traps” for a $5 bounty decades before the animals became protected by federal law, Martin said.

Fish traps and seines were never used as much as gillnets on the Columbia, Martin said.

Gillnets are “just a hugely more flexible tool,” he said. Because of that, “the gillnet is the dominant harvest mechanism on the Pacific Rim.”

However, many sport anglers object that gillnets catch too many non-targeted Columbia River fish such as steelhead and endangered salmon.

“We are gravely concerned with gillnets and their impacts,” said Ed Wickersham, state government relations chairman for the Coastal Conservation Association.

Wickersham, a retired fisheries agent, said purse seines have been used successfully up and down the Pacific Coast. And the CCA cites the Colville Tribe’s report on its use of beach and purse seines last year in the upper Columbia. The tribe reported that 99 percent of wild fish released survived.

Wickersham said the CCA isn’t insisting that gillnets be banned. “We’re not picking gear for somebody,” he said. “We want to see the tools out there so there are some options.

“We need to do something different and we need to do it now,” Wickersham said.

According to Martin, “selective harvest is viewed as the silver bullet.” Problems with habitat and water flow also need to be addressed to help salmon recover, he said.

For now, DFW biologists are focusing on how well the Skamokawa-area seines and trap work and whether they need modifications, Kinne said.

“It’s going to take a few years for us to figure out how which gear will work best,” he said.

Taking a break from hauling in the beach seine, Hilferty said gillnetters will switch to alternative gear if they have to.

“I’m sure if it comes down to it, they will convert over,” Hilferty said. “They’re just used to gillnetting. It’s how they’ve always been doing it, I guess.”