Lucky Louie,

Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see any suitable fish wheel locations. All the former Columbia River fish wheel sites are now under reservoirs. Fish wheels are extremely site sensitive.

Smalma,

A bureaucratic winner for sure! While opportunity is valuable, I recall that even Boldt wrote that opportunity to fish without the likelihood of catching isn't much of an opportunity. And while it's fun to fish the LCR for 3 or 4 days in the spring and again in Aug., I don't value it enough personally to spend a week's vacation down there to catch the few fish I bring home. I think I previously mentioned that the salmon I catch must cost me a few hundred dollars a pound; I think I contribute enough already to the recreational angling economy. If it came down to that kind of sport fishing on the LCR, I think I would just do my salmon fishing in AK instead, and drag an ice chest up and back.

It's interesting that in all this hub-ub about alternative gear and harvesting more hatchery salmon, we don't see anything about the various area allocations, and that's a very big deal. Imagine for a moment how Idaho feels about WA testing selective commercial gear intended to allow fewer Idaho hatchery fish return to Idaho, for example.

Sg