The upcoming regs coming from Sacramento's final round of the North of Falcon meetings next week will probably contain a 50% cutback in sports fishing on the Skokomish River over on the OP. That is going to be initiated to help reach the escapement goal of 1200 fish.

The outrage is that the tribal nets on that river have been relentless and the tribal fish reporting is completely bogus. The Skokomish tribe has defied the North of Falcon process refusing to participate. No surprise as they would be asked to come clean on their over harvesting.

Recent "sampling" of their catches have counted more fish than the tribe reported as their TOTAL harvest..Let me say that again: The Skokomish tribes reported less fish caught in their gill nets than the sampling count...the fish taken from the catch for testing....I'm not privy to the total # of fish involved but it is proof of what WDFW and many others already know and can't do anything about...that is that the tribes thumb their noses at accountability and simply lie about their catch rates. Most are pretty sure this is statewide problem.

When the Boldt decision was shoved up our collective rear ends some 30 years ago the tribes were shocked to recieve 50% as they said they would have been happy with a mere 20%. Now in 2004 they are not satisfied with 50% and want to grab as many fish as possible no matter what science tells us and no matter what the NOF process comes up with.

Next week will tell the tale of the Makah Tribe's refusal to compromise on the troll quota to allow better fishing for us in Puget Sound and in the ocean. The funny thing is that the Makah's have a quota of about 75,000 chinook in the ocean off of area 4..Historically they have taken a mere 15,000 in the past few years. The ESA impact formulas used to set seasons take the 75,000 # into account and not the historical average catches which would be accurate. So if a 10% impact is figured on 75,000 fish that would be 7500 fish counted into the mortality models. If the 10% impact was figured on the actual catch rate of 15,000 fish the impact would only be 1500 fish. That leaves 6,000 fish for sports impacts. The Makah's do not want to give up anything they have won over the years but may decide that sports dollars taken in at Neah Bay are worth the risk to agree to a lower # this year...as long as they can be assured that they still have the future abilty to catch 5 times what they catch now...I am hopeful that the tribes will agree to a sensible plan that is not totally slanted their way for a change.

Right on Grandpa! Now what the hell can we do?

Foil......(gasp)......Foil......I need foil.......

JOhn the RFA Today....Dave I nominated you for the board of directors that is not formed yet...will be soon here in Washington....We need help. First we expose the inequities then we see what we can do to change them.

Hopefully, this is just the beginning of the "eye opening" process for the powers that be.

If the tribes played it cool and continued working their sympathy game, they could probably string along the authorities & the public indefinately. But blatant "in-your-face" defiance should expedite justice being served.

Slab let's you and I carpool over there and kick their a$$eS....good old frontier justice...toss a couple of hay bails into the nets on the way.

I have been trying to say this for years about the Quileute System.

Who counts their comercial catch?

Who gathers all the data for run size and spawner escapement on the system as far as steelhead goes?

Who just listens to whatever the tribe tells them and takes it at full value?

everybody is afraid of the tribes....really pathetic...just so funny that they have samplings of the catch and the number of fish in the sampling exceeding the tribe's reported total catch....The way I heard it was that the WDFW people are well aware of the under reporting by the tribes statewide. Too bad. I suppose it we tried to monitor and count the tribal fisheries they would cry that we are trespassing on their "nation"....oooo my balls are achin

I'll say it again... your issues need national attention. I'll give you a good example. The last time I saw the Makah tribe on national T.V was when they wanted to kill the whale. I think the piece I saw was on 20/20- The whole deal made them look like total gomers exploiting a treaty right from long ago... Here is a side note you can take from that... they did not do it again because they did not like the national attention they got. The story had a focus on how bogus the "usual and accustomed " deal actually is. I think they wound up shooting the whale with a gun. Made them look like complete wankers

I'll say this again and maybe it will be heard this time. The protest that has been talked about here is a great way to start. It would get the issue out into the mainstream public and them mabey something would change. If we could do the protest talked about, it could start something by uniting the sport fishermen and after that other tasks could be accomplished.