Duroboat,
I'm not sure that we wouldn't be fishing if it weren't for the tribes, but I can say we wouldn't have nearly as many hatcheries and hatchery fish if it weren't for the tribes. Just like the feds created a bunch of hatcheries to replace the fish killed by dams (not that it's working much, if at all), the State would run afoul of treaty rights and federal judges if they discontinued too many hatchery programs...the reasoning being that if we hadn't trashed the habitat so bad, we wouldn't need so many hatcheries to satisfy treaty rights. We did trash it, though, so here come the hatcheries...
The tribes, especially through Billy Frank, Jr., and the NWIFC, have continually said that treaty rights are not for sale. For most steelhead fisheries the price that fishermen get for the steelhead doesn't even cover the cost of catching them. The tribes actually buy the fish at a loss so that their fishermen can continue fishing and exercising treaty rights. If I were them, I probably wouldn't sell them either, any more than I'd let someone buy out my chance to go out and fish like I did this morning.
When you say that the sporties' share is 10% and the non-tribal commercial's share is 40%, you're right on some fisheries.
It's certainly not true for steelhead, since by law there is no non-tribal commercial fishery for them. In spite of the fun we sporties have with them when they're around in numbers, the commercial guys catch almost all the non-tribal allocation of pinks and chums, and sockeye when available. The sporties way out fish the commercials on kings and silvers.
This is by law, too, though not as cut and dry as the steelhead situation is. Silvers and kings, by law, are "predominantly" sport fish, and pinks, chums, and sockeyes are "predominantly" commercial commodities.
Going on bare numbers, the commercials do pretty well because their "predominant" fisheries are over gigantic runs of pinks and chums. We may not get as many, but we get the better ones, and get to fish a lot more areas than they do.
Either way you look at it, though, any sport caught fish costs us many more times the $$ to catch than any commercially caught fish will put into the economy.
Had the Bann-All-Nets initiative passed, the only non-tribal commercially caught fish would have been long-lined, which besides reducing the catch considerably would also increase the value of each commercially caught fish manifold. The supply would have gone down a lot, so the price would have gone up, and long lined fish are of a much higher quality and value than netted fish, too. Long liners can also release non-target fish a lot better than nets.
However, if the tribes' share all of a sudden become the great majority of the commercial catch, which is also of a much greater value due to the reduced supply, that wouldn't necessarily make it easier to ask them to reduce their catch.
On the other hand, they might be more likely to put the money into more selective gear types if they don't have anyone to compete with.
Many, many issues to look at...and each answer brings up three more questions. I guess we'll have to run out of questions some time, though...
I don't think we'd be able to get the tribes to agree to not net rivers, because a lot of tribes, most probably, don't have treaty rights to fish anywhere other than in rivers. When those who don't have saltchuck rights fish in the salt, they are part of the general commercial fishery, which would be banned by the B.A.N. initiative...
We might be able to trade the pinks and chums that the non-tribals commercials aren't catching anymore for the steelhead, though...that's a trade I'd go for in a heartbeat.
Those issues and questions are difficult enough, but we can't even bring them up until we get the states, feds, tribes, sportfishermen, and commercial fishermen all at the table at once...and remember that each and every one of those stakeholders has a valid interest, and that some of those valid interests conflict with each other.
As it sits now...
1. Sport fishermen b!tch about the State and the tribes, not to mention the commercial fishermen, for giving away or catching too many of "our" fish. Besides the fact that we want to catch them, we put a lot more money into the economy than the other two combined.
2. The tribes b!tch about the states and feds ruining the environment so that fish runs are so reduced as it is. They don't like being called "rapists" of rivers, when we catch just as many as them in the rivers they fish, plus all the fish we catch in rivers that don't have treaty fishermen.
3. The states are so harvest minded that they can more easily wrap their collective minds around how to divide up four fish than worry about why there are only four fish. The Biological Assessment proffered by the states regarding upping the ESA impacts during the Col. R. gillnet (uh...tangle net, I mean
) actually states that the improved population numbers of the ESA listed fish requires a higher impact, rather than actually go with what might be working to get the populations up.
Last I read in the ESA, the whole point is to recover animals and get them delisted, not just screw with everything that uses the environment around them in perpetuity.
4. Here's the catch all...throw in radical enviros that want to end fishing of all forms, a mainly apathetic public who couldn't really care less (all good eating fish comes from the Copper River, anyway, doesn't it?), and nimrods who run roughshod over the whole process of cooperative negotiations because they never took the time to figure out what the he11 they were talking about, and you can see the difficulties involved.
Kinda makes me wonder why anyone would even bother, it's such a frickin' mess...but...
I got to fish this morning, hooked three, lost a pretty hatchery hen on the bank, and CnR'd a nice wild buck (lost the other too far out to see what it was). I was home by 10am...just in time for breakfast.
That's why I bother...
Since we don't have any legal way to stop the tribes from taking their half however they see fit, really, the public perception of them is all we have to work with. Passing WSR just gave us a little leg up in the PR department...it doesn't look like a fish grab if we're not grabbin' 'em, just asking to leave more in the river for all of us.
Fish on...
Todd
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