Here we are on the eve of our first native steelhead runs, which got me thinking yesterday about how many fish we are likely to see this season compared to last. I don't know how the powers that be are going to engineer the realocation of 4/5 of our historical sport harvest on the OP, but here are a couple of senarios.

They could base their numbers on punch card returns. Worse yet, they could assume an annual 5 fish harvest based on number of punch cards sold. The bottom line is the native gill nets will be in more days a week for a longer season to capture these fish, which means less fish upstream. We would have been better off promoting the CNR ethic among our ranks and leaving the law out of it.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

Through latter January, there is no increase over last year on the netting days on either the Hoh or Quillayute system.

So the tribes won't be taking any more in the run component that needs the most help AND with a one fish limit annually, I believe a number of the early wild fish will be released as someone may not want to use their only punch to kill an early fish vs. waiting until later on.

Mission accomplished.

In the latter part of the year, the Hoh's apparently did up their days, but contrary to popular opinion, that was decided long before the moratorium / limit reduction, because no one at the state had the balls to stand up the tribe. Moritorium or not, that was decided long ago.

I belive the Quillayutes have small increase in their net days later (I can't find last year's schedule to count exact days), but it's not likely to add up to 4/5 of the sport total with their additional time.

Think of the number of guides & privates that regularly harvest wild fish, on a daily basis for many ... when you add those numbers up over the course of a season, it starts to be a pretty big number. The new regs will reduce that somewhat, which given the state of affairs in the steelhead fisheries around the state, will probably be a very good thing for all anglers on these streams down the road.

Maybe it will save a nice 18-19 pound buck that would have died before, but now someone wants to save that punch for a true trophy. Maybe that 15. lb 3-time spawner (incresed productivity) hen will get released instead of becoming side-drifted bait beause of the rule.

Lots of if's or maybe's, but if ends up with only a couple of hundred fish, or maybe just a handful of the "right" ones end up doing their thing, then it is a good thing for the future.

We have some of the last decent runs left out this way, shouldn't we take some early steps to maybe avoid the collapses that have taken place elsewhere?

You might be able to answer the question yourself in answering why do you drive 2 1/2 hours to Forks instead of an hour down to the Hood Canal streams?

Sure, it sometimes sucks to bing the law into it ... but it's certainly not a perfect world is it ??

I agree Bob; this may not be ideal but it is a step in the right direction,
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