I didn't read the whole thread...just the initial post, and then a few posts after...

Where did that initial post get copied over from? It's full of folks who don't know much of anything, on both sides of the argument.

The fact of the matter is, so long as there is non-tribal commercial fishing in the LCR, none of this will matter hardly at all to the health of the fish or the fisheries...just requiring them to use a different tool to kill their share of the ESA springers won't save a single salmon, it will just increase the commercial harvest while killing the same amount.

So far as the initiative goes, it doesn't matter for the Columbia River...unless Washington State follows suit. Without the Compact agreeing on regs, new regs (no matter how they come about) won't apply to the Columbia River, at least not significant regs that greatly affect the fisheries.

If there was anything important that I missed between the middle of page 1 and the end, go ahead and let me know and I'll see about it...when I get back from fishing in a few days

Happy New Year!

Fish on...

Todd

Gill nets are a thing of the past and the Columbia River is one of the last remaining areas that allow them. They have needed to go away for decades...........I hope this is the beginning of the end for gill nets.

RM

Resource grab editorial, notice how headline grabbing editorials never seem to be signed by anyone. Sounds like a commercial gill net pitch man to me.

Nothing like the un-educated misinformed to step in and pontificate!


Fishy

+1

I usually check to read comments, but this cowardly newspaper will only let you submit your comments and questions, and then decide, what fits into their game plan.

Cant say Im surprised. Printing the wrong editorial in that newspaper might lead to criminal actions. I expect the bars are full of commercials, with all kinds of ideas.

I expect the bars are full of commercials, with all kinds of ideas.



Yeah Like taking the tribes out, showing them the drifts, then flipping them the keys. Is one that I've heard

Tell me why I should care....

Columbia River salmon, steelhead
endorsement will take effect April 2010

OLYMPIA – Starting April 1, anglers who fish for salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River and its tributaries will be required to purchase a new endorsement that will help maintain and improve fishing opportunities throughout the basin.

The Columbia River Recreational Salmon and Steelhead Pilot Program endorsement was authorized by Senate Bill 5421 during the 2009 Legislative session. The annual endorsement was one of several license fee changes approved by the Legislature earlier this year to help offset a $30 million cutback in state funding for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW).

The total charge of the endorsement, after transaction and dealer fees, will be $8.75. The endorsement and recreational fishing licenses for the licensing year that begins April 1, 2010 can be purchased beginning Dec. 1, 2009.

Funds generated from the endorsement fee will support the evaluation of selective fisheries in the Columbia River Basin, said John Long, WDFW’s statewide salmon and steelhead fisheries manager. Funds also will be used for other management activities, including fisheries enforcement, data collection and monitoring.

Selective fisheries allow anglers to catch and keep abundant hatchery fish, which are marked with a missing adipose fin, but require that they release wild fish.

“This program is designed to support current selective sport fisheries for salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River and its tributaries, and – to the maximum extent possible – expand those opportunities in the future,” said Long.

The endorsement will be required, along with a fishing license, for anglers 15 years of age and older to fish for salmon and steelhead on the Columbia River and its tributaries when open to fishing for those species.

WDFW, working with the Columbia River Salmon and Steelhead Recreational Advisory Board, has proposed a list of rivers, lakes and other waters in the Columbia River basin where the endorsement will be required. That list, available on the department’s website at http://wdfw.wa.gov/licensing/crss_endorsement/, is one of more than 100 proposed sportfishing rules for 2010-12.

The entire sportfishing rule-proposal package can be found on the department’s website at http://wdfw.wa.gov/fish/regs/rule_proposals/index.htm.

This is straight from WDFW website. Reading it and listening to what is going on lately I`ve drawn a conclussion. Sport fishermen are about to pay for the commercial fishermen`s switch to more selective methods. Researching this new fee I`ve found that there will be a board that will decide how to spend these fees and report on it. We`ll see. Others on other sites have said that I am wrong with this theory but everything I have read so far leads to the same conclussion. I agree with the posters here that state that this proposal by Oregon CCA will NOT end up to be a good thing for sport fishermen. When the nets go in the LCR fsports fishing suffers, this proposal will lead to LONGER commercial seasons due to nearly nearly no ESA impacts with these NEW methods that were outlawed in the early 1900`s because they were too effective. While it`s been tried before without success I`m for banning ALL commercial fishing on the LCR. Funds generated from the endorsement fee will support the evaluation of selective fisheries in the Columbia River Basin This is the portion I`m reffering to, who`s trying new selective fishing methods?Bill

bill, did you just take good notes, or did you cut and paste what Boater wrote?


This really looks like the same game plan they used last year, to divide fisherman and hunters. They just got a few yes men in a room and then told the legislature, that 57,000 hunters wanted to get rid of the Fish and wildlife commission.

Again... divide and conquer, by scaring couch anglers, they might catch one or two less fish.....

Bill, where is the peer review on this projection. Where are these un caught wildfish going to die?

Show me the law, that says, the non tribal commercial will have priority over all recreational anglers.

Business of all kinds have mandates. This is no different. You either man up and change, or you sell your permit back to the state. One of the easiest ways to increase the yield per boat, is to limit the amount of permits in the fishery. They are not being used, so how bad do they need the money?

Yes, it looks like the "endorsement" is WA anglers share. And for Oregon, in CCA's proposed ballot initiative, according to their press release, there is funding for the commercials through some yet-unknown mechanism.

Great. The commercials can't fund their own fishery experiments, to benefit themselves. So we anglers are going to kick in more money, to subsidize them more, to increase their competition with sport anglers.

Whatta Plan! It's a re-packaged version of what CCA took to the Oregon Legislature. With a subsidy added. Too bad it wasn't instead a straight buy-out of commercial licenses to settle the issue once and for all.

About that 'competition'. Notice the WDFW isn't talking about any caps on commercial harvest. Nor does CCA 's press release mention a cap to protect sport fishing as being a key point of their initiative.

This is a great thread despite the differences of opinion. It truly demonstrates that the sporting community couldnt organize enough to save their life. We'd burn to death trying to debate what fire exit to take while the building was burning down around us. Hell with it--I'm thowing money to CCA for having the wherewithall to make a stand.

This plan that CCA has drawn up is clearly anti sportfishing.
But will it win a cake at the PTA?

Didn`t take too good of notes on this subject but I do know how to copy and paste---Where are these un caught wildfish going to die?--- And the answer that I heard was that when the seines or whatever that they come up with become effective enough a much greater percentage of fish that make it up to the sport fishermen will be native origin. Therefore our impacts will be much higher than they currently are. So the answer to your question is that sportsmen will end up being the bad guys by killing the higher percentage of wild fish and commercial fishermen will become the "saviors" of our native stocks. ---Show me the law, that says, the non tribal commercial will have priority over all recreational anglers.--- We`ve seen this time and time again, it`s not a law it`s made up as they go. Front loading their season, fishing at night,temporarily closing sport seasons so they won`t have to "compete" with us,and just look at their schedule for the last several years. Seems these few commercials have had priority to me.
Bill

Bill,

Should we kill off the remainder of the wild fish?

I want some of whatever your smoking! How the hell does getting the gill nets out of the columbia equate to being anti sports fisherman??????

Fishy

Absolutely not, what kind of a question is that? Wild fish are special, kind of preaching to the choir about that. We should ban gillnets on the LCR to save wild fish AND a few more hatchery keepers for ME, do you think we need to ban sport fishing too? Bill

I dont care how its funded. When the state buys out the fishing permits, it uses taxpayer dollars to accomplish the buy out. Complaining about where the money comes from, is a whiners argument. Sportsmen dont come close to paying for the fish, that is raised in the hatcheries. Sports are subsidized. 20% of your own power bill buys a lot of hatchery fish. Dont start crying about 9.00 dollars.

If you let the rest of the wild fish die, how much will it cost, to reseed the rivers with Alaskan Fish? (How long will the govt close those rivers? to protect those new Alaskan or BC live spawners? There wont be ANY HARVEST on those rivers. No tribal harvest will allow reseeding, but, then we would have to pay the tribes for lost harvest.


Commercial fisheries have been losing market share to fish farms. If they want to compete, they will have to find another way to produce fish, that dont impact wild fish, or create a nursery for sea lice. The Squaxin tribe, has a bay fishery with hatchery fish, that come back and mill around, looking for a creek. The catch a small portion of wildfish. My tin hat theory is that they dont want the wild fish problem. No wild fish, means you are free to crank out the hatchery fish and every river becomes a fish ranch.
Where will that money come from?

I wanted you to be clear about your priorities. Too many guys expect a perfect plan. Nothing is perfect. They can make adjustments to the ESA mortality allocation. Its a crazy assumption that just because a net wont lose any wild fish, it gives the commercial fishermen the sport share of the allocation. There are so many variables year to year, if the spring returns crashed, noone would be fishing. We are already having trouble with HATCHERY RETURNS and while we blame the ocean, we occasionally find out, that the pollock fishery has killed an extra 90,000 chinook, or the Makahs over fished their quota by 19,000 fish as they did a few years ago.

Keep in mind, who benefits from the sportsmen, being divided over a few assumption about what future allocation projection will look like. Never has one of them mentioned the good news about the Colville hatchery, that will be built and how many fish it will add to the columbia harvest. They only want you to focus on one thing. Your getting screwed, if wild fish live.

If you want to eliminate the non tribals from the allocation equation, they will need their own supply of fish, that doesnt come out of or go back to rivers with a sport harvest. That protect their share from the tribal split.

From an article in today's Daily Astorian concerning the net ban initiative:

Here we go again
Proposed gillnet ban would delegate resource management to TV pitchmen
An advocacy group is at it again this winter, promising to put an initiative to ban gillnetting on Oregon's November ballot. Voters should reject this self-serving plan.

All types of fishing play important parts in the economy and culture of the Lower Columbia River. Although the commercial importance of salmon isn't what it once was, gillnetting continues to support local families. And for many residents, gillnetters provide our only hope of buying a splendid taste of the salmon that swim past our towns.

Nor should we overlook the contributions of recreational fishing. Taking many forms, from casting a line off a jetty to spending thousands on a boat, sport angling is both a key lifestyle choice and a prime economic sector.

Just as our economy needs all types of fishing, salmon need all types of fishermen to serve as allies in the struggle against river industrialization and environmental threats like global warming. Most fishing groups understand this partnership and have worked well together over the years.

The regrettable exception to this spirit of cooperation is the newly arrived Coastal Conservation Association, which might be better named "More Salmon For Us." This sport-fishing group will be trying to persuade voters that it is somehow immoral to catch salmon in a net. They tried and failed to push the same radical agenda in the Oregon Legislature last session.

Designing fisheries with a citizens' initiative is a horribly flawed idea, essentially taking management out of the hands of biologists and placing it with TV advertising pitchmen who will try to convince a big block of urban voters to put gillnetters out of business. This is no way to improve salmon populations.

There are worthwhile studies under way to enhance the selectivity of salmon harvests. These even include bringing back a form of fish traps, which permit fishermen to examine unharmed salmon and free any that spawn in the wild. Considering the money and expertise invested in gillnetting, any broad-scale change in methodology will necessitate much thought, planning and government assistance.

But such innovations may be the real future of salmon management, not heavy-handed resource grabs like the one being pushed upon voters in 2010.

grizz, that was already posted.