Bob,

I'm not trying to be unfair...it's just that you obviously have a point somewhere in there, you think you already know where the Commission erred, yet you keep asking me where they did. I've already said they didn't.

I'll bite again, though...

Here's what the WSP says about that...

1. Escapements are set.
2. Fish over escapement are "harvestable", using the MSY model.
3. The "harvestable" portion of the run is divided up, half for the tribal fishers and half for the non-tribal fishers.

**The non-tribal share has already been apportioned between commercial and sport fisheries at the North of Falcon meetings**

4. The tribal fishers net their half.
5. Our half is either netted by commercials or fished for by sportfishermen.

We'll leave the tribal and non-tribal commercial parts out, since I don't think (?) that we're worried about them right now.

6. Sport fisheries are constructed to take advantage of the sport fishing allocation. If they estimate that there are, say, 500 fish in the allocation, they can use different management philosophies to use the allocation. They could have a three day fishery with a three fish limit (they would have numbers saying that this be the most they could fish without going over the limit).

They could have a two week season with a one fish limit (the numbers would show that fishing effort would be slightly reduced, so the season would be more than three times as long with one third the limit).

Finally, they could have a two month season, with WSR, figuring that incidental mortalities will satisfy the sportfishermen's opportunity to fish.

The final option is the exact one the WDFW chose to do on the Chehalis system last spring when it had a greater than predicted run of wild winter run steelhead.

They proposed two different kill seasons, both at different, but shorter, times (a week, I think), and they proposed a WSR season, in which you could still harvest hatchery fish, for a month.

They went with the third one...it had a much longer season, more people could participate, the positive economic impacts would be much greater, more hatchery fish would be harvested over the month than would be in a week, and more wild fish made it to the spawning grounds.

Removing the OP exceptions from the statewide wild steelhead release regulations is a very similar decision...and just as legal as the one they made last year on the Chehalis.

And that Bob, is what the WSP says about that!

Are we getting there yet?

Fish on...

Todd