You can look at the picture on this post....know that it happens 5 days a week for the duration of the run and you think were just WHINING? Your kidding right?

We should get Microsoft on this. They've had such a success with Halo, maybe they can turn this visual into a video game....about how to be a salmon or steelhead and make it back to the river, figuring out how to navigate the nets. Level 1, you hatch from the egg, level 2, you survive the river/creek for awhile, level 3, you make it down stream and to Puget Sound, level 4, you survive the sound and head to the ocean, heading up north for fertile waters in Alaska. Level 5, bareley surving Alaskan waters, you head for home water, Level 6, you pass through the occasion nets/trollers/sporties on the whole way down the coast, then bypass the masses at Neah Bay and Sekui. Level 7, you swim through the straight and miss getting hooked by me along the beaches of Whidbey, Level, 8 you barley make it down to Seattle, start to enter you home water and turn aroundfrom the frightening site of all them nets. Level 9, you attempt to not get caught, trying to swim and find a way through the blockage of nets, this is the hardest level to master. Level 10, you make it to your home grounds, only to find your mate got netted so you you have to release all that "spawn" yourself, then you die, a winner.

wow, dude.

I guess if you are that curious you could ask your fish checkers WHO does the counting of Indian fish by the state. ...or better yet, GO there and watch them "count" the Indian fish.

What about the picture gives you the impression that you (or any of "us") are gonna get our HALF of the runs in that river???


...yeah, i guess we are ALL just whining.

As I said in my first post, the sight hits me hard in the gut too. But, my questions are still the same: Is this run endangered? Is there escapement? Do we get our share? Are they just getting their fair share of the harvested fish? Do they have to pull the nets when a certain number is reached? If we really worked WITH the Natives and they didn't have to fear that we would try to take away this right, this way of life, like ours; could we find a solution to the real problems?

Before I could afford a boat, I put many many hours and days on the river. I have noticed the dramatic difference of the number of fish going through after the nets go in. I have also noticed the fish continue rolling through and people continue catching fish after the "complete blockage."

Are you saying that the Natives shouldn't get any fish? How many? How would you have them get their share? Should they be able to say how we fish? If you start on the they should do it like their ancestors argument, you are just whining. They are already employed at the Casinos? Just looking for beer money? Come on, what's the median wage in King County? Do we have the right to say they can only earn so much, how many non Natives make 6 figures, should/do we we regulate them ? Those arguments are whining.

Accept it's their right to fish, to take half the resource. Accept that their fishing looks different than ours. Realize that we, sport fishers and Native fishers have more in common than the vast majority of the human population, and we should join forces to ensure that we have the maximum number of fish to split and ....share. Put ourselves in their shoes. What would we do?

"but I am a sport fisherman and believe that we should get our half"


You share half with the non-tribal gillnetters, non-tribal trollers, non-tribal commercials of all flavors. The actual recreational percentage of the harvest is a number I don't have, but would guess it to be 20% or less of the total harvest.

I consider myself a lot more open minded about tribal fishing rights, and what the spirit of the Boldt decision was about than most west end sporties. So if I'm really disturbed by the pic of the river being totally and overwhelming obstructed to upstream passage, chances are the average person on the street would be freaked out as well.

I think the CCA has a shot at making changes if they approach this from the conservation angle. Any reasonable person who saw nets stretched out like that would wonder WTF was going on, and how were any fish expected to spawn unless they sprouted f'n wings. Keep shooting those pics. With very little commentary they are a very persuasive argument against nets.

I'm a solid proponent of weir's with Fed monitors/observers. We get an accurate count of upriver escapement, wild/or listed fish swim off alive, tribes bonks their cut and can immediately process their fish, everything gets monitored by live observer or by 24 hour camera. Just my 2 C.

VHawk

Give them a dip net and then tell them to get their 50%. I don't know enough about this to give a valid argument, so anything I say should should be taken witha grain of salt, but, that is an ugly picture to the eye, even the uninformed eye.

Well, maybe they catch 100% of silvers in the Green.

They elect not to catch any Chum. That way they only catch a combined half of the both.

100% availiable silvers- zero chum= 50% avaliable salmon

So we won the battle but lost the war? Home waters are ruined forever. Why do I drive 1.5 to 3.0 hrs to fish.A pictures worth a thousand words. No wonder the "Green River' silvers are so small.
Could they "net" the Sonics too.

You make sense Vhawk, and I appreciate your tone and concession.


I once asked this question of why it couldn't be done with traps and weirs to some tribal officials. Their response was two fold and made me think. First was the fear that if they gave in on the time on the water and how they do it, they would pay hell trying to get it back; witness the Makah trying to whale now. Second was, how do you fairly allocate revenue from the fishing to individual fisherman. Now, with the nets, the ones who work the hardest, invest more time and resources get compensated more. I was a bit disappointed with the raw capitalism of it, but figured that it is the American way.

I understand that sporties get a minimal "share" and support the idea that we should be able to influence how that share is divided up. My interest as a sport fisherman is to limit or eliminate the Non-native commercial fishery, and to that end I support the non commercialization of the resouce. It is our right to try and do that, but I don't personally believe we have the right to tell the Natives how they can get their share.

If the CCA or any other group appears to be trying to take from the Natives in the guise of conservation it could ally the Natives and the Commercial fisherman, and we will surely get our butts kicked. However, if sportfishers came out steadfastly in support of Native fishing rights, and worked to use conservation science with the Natives, who (nets across the river or not) seem to be making more conservation headway than anyone, and are my neighbors, not some foreign import of animal rights activists that will turn on us in the future, it seems to this uneducated fool a reasonable strategy also. This is not possible if we alienate them at every chance we get.

I have heard in the past the sport catch of the harvested salmon is between 5 and 10%. Maybe someone can back up this percentage range?

I'm not worried about getting half...or whatever percentage we get. I'm worried about having fish in the years to come. I'd like to see lots of fish and i think it would be an attainable goal with good management.

I fished one gillnet season for sockeye in bristol bay years ago. A HUGE commercial fishery....but wait! It's MANAGED! They actually count how many fish are up the river....hmmm ok boys...weve got a MILLION up the naknek...go ahead and hit it! OH WAIT...The kvichak only had approx a million in the river...we want 1.5 mill before we open it! The commercial fishery takes place in the salt...not the rivers and the native openers are for subsistence only! I know...our local rivers dont have the habitat for spawning that those so up there do but give em a chance. I think people would be astounded to see what runs could be sustained if there was no commercial fishing.

I am not advocating no commercial fishing...just higher expectations for what our fish runs could be with better management.

Dolphin, you must get paid to make this sh!t up.



"we alienate them" Wouldn't that be an:

ox·y·mo·ron (ŏk'sē-môr'ŏn', -mōr'-) Pronunciation Key
n. pl. ox·y·mo·ra (-môr'ə, -mōr'ə) or ox·y·mo·rons
A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined, as in a deafening silence and a mournful optimist.
[Greek oxumōron, from neuter of oxumōros, pointedly foolish : oxus, sharp; see oxygen + mōros, foolish, dull.]


Is it not the treaties that alienate and specifically discriminate the tribe based on their ethnicity?

Join forces? ygtbfkm.

Regardless of what condition the run is in and who gets what,the type of excess shown here is JUST PLAIN WRONG!

We should raise some money to produce a video. It could be a heart-wrenching documentary about the effects of these racsist treaty rights.

Think of the footage and images we, collectively, could come up with. Fish rotting in the back of a POS truck, unattended set-nets with birds pecking the eyes out of the fish at low tide. Discarded fish stripped of their eggs, drunken idiots launching at the boatramp. Conditions on the "res". Botched whale hunts. Gross overfishing. So-on and so-on.

Add some gloomy music, dramatic statistics, dialouge and interviews. It could become a powerful tool to re-educate the general public on how these ill-concieved, vexing treaty rights violate the "american way" and promote segregation, discrimination and huge socio-economic problems.

Is this picture available for distribution??

LIke others have said this is normal for these guys. Now they have their little fishing company down on the Green, and have seen decent returns, and a market to cater to, "Safeway". But hey, its cyclical, they will fish the sh@t out of the river, then in four years there will be less and less, year after year, then the company will go under, and everyone will head back to the Rez to what they do best in Auburn. Then they all will forget about fishing and hits the gov't doll until the next good fishing cycle.

[quote=Wooly Bully]Dolphin, you must get paid to make this sh!t up.

No Wooly, I don't get paid to "make this up" I guess I'm just not as smart as some of you. I can match most any here with time on the water, and commitment to fishing, and I am not at all swayed by any of the "arguments" I have seen here. Perhaps the average consumer will support your arguments if you ratchet up the hate.

More than my share of the 2cents Rant on folks.

Racism goes both ways. As long as you play the victim card you will be a victim. Maybe you should start looking outside the box to see what's really going on around you.

I fished yesterday near southcenter, as I have a few times the last couple weeks. CnR'd a Small King and a Pink both Dark. I had no idea what was going on down river. The one thing that was different yesterday is I did not see one silver jump and there had been plenty before.
There are lots of dark king and pinks milling around down there but I think they have been sitting there for awhile...

Dolphin,

I do have to respect you in the fact that im sure your sticking up for what you believe. It takes balls to stick up for tribal fishing rights on here. however,I think that your views are misguided. I'm not going to start listing off all of the horrible things ive seen and heard first hand from others on hunting/fishing run a muck by certain tribes, but i've seen way more than enough. I'm guessing if you had seen the same you would have a different view. The part of being fair and right for the tribes to have the rights they do I personally don't understand. I'm sure if i went back in my ancestry I could find some group that mistreated my ancestors...conquored land...and so on. This is the way the world has evolved. I don't get reporations from these events in the past. We need to live in the present. Not making ammends for something that happened that has nothing to do with anyone alive at this point.

Pretty much SOP wtih landings measured in 10,000s . However what is really shocking is that in spite of the heavy netting escapements are met.

The wild coho in the basin are listed as healthy (the beauty of composite/integrated stock managment???).

The hatchery escapements are consistently well above brood stock needs. As I recall they need roughly 2,00 to 2,500 adults at the hatcheyr to meet egg take needs and over the last 9 years the hatchery has gotten 3 to 20 times that number. Duirng that period the hatchery escapement has exceeded 30,000 fish for 6 years, with the "high water" mark being in 2004 when 50,000 fish made it back to the hatchery (source WDFW hatchery escapement reports).

Assurely the Tribal fishery harvest more than 50% of the harvestable numbers. However given how poorly those fish bite on inside waters the only way I can see that the non-treaty fishery would reach 50% would be for non-treaty commerical fishery in the same areas. Does that really make any difference to the recreational fisheries?

Tight lines
Curt

It would be interesting to see if over the years the average size of the escapemnet fish shrunk. What I mean is if due to mesh size a genitically smaller fish was returning.
JY

That's BS!!!!!!!!!