Well, I think we can safely state that El Nino is bad, bad, bad for mainland coho runs, and we've seen enough to know this year is no exception. By now, we should fully expect dramatic, overnight collapses in coho numbers every time an El Nino pattern emerges. I have to believe our co-managers know this by now, which begs the question of why they would even think about upholding a hugely optimistic forecast after the weather had already clearly demonstrated a long, dry trend.

Rivrguy's right on. I could credit the QIN with taking a week off to conserve Chinook if I actually believed for an instant that's why they did it, but the way they responded (keeping on fishing) after another week of poor Coho fishing when they went back in (one of their patented five day onslaughts, no less) suggests all they were concerned about was losing days because of taking too many Chinook early.

The argument that the GHMP was upheld throughout this debacle doesn't do much to satisfy my displeasure with losing a fishery that didn't need to be taken away. Whether it was within GHMP guidelines or not, bookending the weekly QIN slaughter with NT openers, after it was already abundantly clear the Coho weren't coming, was nothing less than irresponsible, unsound management.

To be clear, I'm not arguing that the closure doesn't seem necessary; that would be pretty dishonest on my own part. What I am saying is that it wouldn't have been necessary had the co-managers made in-season adjustments consistent with what the gillnet catch was showing us.

As regards Thiesfeld, we've been talking a lot about how Ron Warren, like him or not, has only followed direction from his superiors. As a fellow employee, beholden to the same superiors, why should we expect Thiesfeld (or Unsworth, for that matter) to run things any differently?

Finally, I agree that there is discrimination (and even racism) inherent in the current fisheries management paradigm. As much as we upriver sporties lament getting shut down because the higher priority user groups had to get theirs first (NOT talking about recs in the bay), being a second-class citizen in this game is a much better situation than the one the salmon find themselves in when our policies fail them, yet again.