Not sure which post you are responding to. Seems pretty clear.

HSRG reported less than 1.5% morality rates when they made their presentation at the Oregon Legislature last session. I defer to their figures until you or anyone else can prove otherwise. 5% handling rate is high for a seine capture. 12.5% is way low for tanglenets also. You continue to assert or assume that they will still be allowed to kill as many ESA fish as they have been in the past. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe by impacting fewer ESA fish the rates can then be lowered? Continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results is pure stupidity on the part of the managers. Yes your math works there.

I'm not blind to what you are saying. Its just that you are convinced the ESA allowable take will remain the same. I'm not but if it happens I'll buy you a steak and a drink to wash it down with. I have seen the mood changing slowly since CCA came into the picture. Like it or not Todd, they are the gorilla in the room and they are no longer ignored. CCA members. and not just $25 experts, now sit on most advisory groups and committees alongside other preferred groups. Many of them are retired biologists and scientists. I'll gladly pay the $25 until someone convinces me otherwise. So far they have not.

I saw this same nit picking, side choosing, back stabbing crap go on 25 years ago and told some guides the same thing. Keep fighting amongst yourselves. We are our own worst enemy and the gill netters love it.

As for the bridge, keep it, you may need it.

One more thing then I'm done. As the market gets saturated with fish the price goes down. They know it and they are not about to let that happen.

You're not going to saturate any market with fresh Columbia River spring Chinook...there's far more people and places that want it than there are in the entire river.

This would still be a loser for sporties and negligible, at best, for wild fish even if Mother Theresa had come up with it...it has nothing to do with the CCA or anyone else...just as a good idea doesn't care who has it, the same goes for a bad one.

Fish on...

Todd

P.S. I just used numbers for illustrative purposes in my previous post...if it's really only 1.5%, then that just means they'll encounter fifteen to twenty times as many wild fish before they are closed down, and will catch fifteen to twenty times as many hatchery fish as they do now...and the ones that die in the fish friendly seines are just as dead as those that die in the "walls of death"...

Thanks guys for the really "Good Stuff," but as much as I am loving this, really true, I have to go to bed. The morning comes ringin' a'early.

I think these dialogs are what bring us all along, and so, reluctantly, I go to bed.

Very, very,

Ok Todd I'll give you the last word on this. Now has anyone seen that dead horse around anywhere?

This argument is pointless. Its not going to be settled on the pages of PP or IF. Fortunately!

So this is what I'm getting currently the spring non-tribal impact is 2.2% or less depending on run size. The primates are convinced that by reducing that to say 1.4% that this is going to spark the recovery that has been alluding us for years..Thanks but I'll support Redden and a few other groups that are alittle more evolved.

We all want the same thing. Why are so many people hung up on the fact that this solution isn't perfect yet? At the very least, one argument I can safely make is that wild fish are certainly no worse off for this development. If all commercial fishing were going to continue with gillnets, I could not confidently say the same.

We all agree that gillnets need to go, right? If that's true, then we should all be celebrating the fact that successful test runs of this alternative gear will spell the beginning of the end for walls of death. True, sports fishing may suffer in the short term, but haven't we all got enough life experience to know that an elephant needs to be eaten one bite at a time?

Let's get the gillnets out of the river while we can and use the political power we DO have (provided we stand together) to take the next step and get the allowable ESA impact levels reduced. The issues surrounding salmon and steelhead recovery are far too numerous and complex to be dealt with in a single piece of legislation. Let's grab whatever momentum this gives us and build on it.

where are you getting your info that says they wont use gillnets after they have this new selective method perfected ??

You really are cynical. Seine fisheries are already common in the salt here and Alaska, they just are not requiring the separation of wild fish. Which means the dept has ordered seine nets. In respect to your question, the Youtube video of the selective harvest legislation, the gillnetter told Blake, NOAA already told them, selective or the plants get cut. But, then you might have missed that, since you cropped the video times to suit your agenda. You cut off witness on the front and the back end.


I also find it amusing that no one from California ever bothers to chime in on these monthly cry baby sessions. About the time Washington and Oregon made gillnets the only legal gear on the CR. California banned them altogether. Guess there isnt any sportfishing in California.


Maybe the Lawyer/mathematician could explain how the harvest allocation would change, if only safe areas were used with the .10 mortality (and the unfortunate increase in URB that followed all the pen fish into the safe areas) Tell us what the difference is and why they wont catch more and more hatchery fish. Right now the safe areas are not part of the split with the tribes. In order to have the harvest you claim the commercial will get, they will need to replant the more lower tributary and upper tributary fish in the safe areas, because in effect, they are fishing more selectively. That is, if you can get every boat into the safe area. Of course if any permits are retired, the per boat harvest goes up and the allocation remains the same, something that has not been explored. The lawyer wants to kick them out of the CR. Well so do the rest of us. But fishing off the mouth of the columbia requires selective gear or some other changes to eliminate wild fish mortality. Apparently in the ocean, the 2% is not part of the equation. LCR Sports will always need an impact. "Tribal and Commercial fisheries should be required to reduce impacts as much as possible. It falls under corporate and environmental responsibility, not you get all the fish if you dont kill all the wild off.
Too many get caught up in the Past time, handed down thru generations BS. Well so is every other business and they all have to tow the line in environmental and technological changes. This whole thing stinks of a stealth commercial lobby on PP


Might also be interesting to hear the L/M on how Dam removal will/won't change the harvest allocations of hatchery and or wild fish, since there would be more wild fish and more impacts, cause as you say, the same amount of fish would die. You can skip the diatribe about me and just answer the fking question. Id also like to see the law, that says it cannot be changed.

Of course the other part of this is about all west coast ocean fishing, because BC and AK are catching our fish in seine nets and whatever is swimming next to them. I called Ak F & G. They dont sort. They should be sorting and fishing near the terminal bays in order to reduce lower 48 bycatch. with all the extra fish coming back, it could easily change the equation.

Given the crab issue, the state is finally looking at the money brought in by recreational harvest. Id still like to meet the politican who would run on that platform, he will get sport votes. Id like to see any politician stand up and defend Todds position and expect to win. We should do nothing and let the Pew Trust and Packard, with a little help from OUR OCEANS, just shut down all fishing period.

I doubt the questions will be answered since they dont fit into his agenda. But then with all the groups like Wild fish conservancy, its hard to decide, whether to support them, when they want to push Marine protection areas, and NOT doing anything about 15,ooo seals in Puget Sound. There were about 40 people at the aquarium who heard that.

In regards to the plant cuts, maybe the feds planned it all along. Have the tribe produce more fish and reduce funding somewhere else. Its also possible they may be using the threat of cuts to hurry the process along. They are adding a LOT of fish to the pens and so if they are subtracting from the main stem fishery, its pretty much the same thing as raising their allocation. For every thousand fish they take from the main stem tribs, we lose about 550. But, since they get 45% plus all the fish in the safe areas, they already could be taking more hatchery than the sport allocation.

If you need time to think, just call me names... see ya all next month for the boater cry session. Boater, do you have periods?

The power industry doesn't like any group that could pose a threat to their goals of cheap power and less spent on behalf of the fish.


Amen...and every plan I've seen fit's this perfectly.

I can appreciate what you are saying, but all sports and conservation organizations aren’t created equal. Some wouldn’t have a snowballs chance in Hades to even think about removing gill nets let alone attempting to ban them. There are diverse coalitions that range from sports and conservation orgs.,to gill netters, purse seiners, and commercial trawlers that are partners all rolled into one coalition. What appears to be sports bickering on the outside really could be something different all together.

Yet again a thread that proves recreational fishing will continue to suck hind t!t because sportfishers are collectively dumber than a box of f'n rocks. Well done folks.

Sg

I don't feel any need to respond to stupid conspiracy accusations...I'm pretty sure my reputation with both the sportfishing and conservation communities stands by itself...not to mention my reputation with the commercial industry, which is not viewed very friendly, not by a long length.

The usual "you must be a commercial fishing lover" garbage always comes out when people run out of anything useful to contribute to the debate, so I guess that's where we are, again.

Fish on...

Todd

At the hearings, the commercials demand 50% of the harvest, or 50% of the ESA impacts. To them that's 'equitable'. And total equity with sports, if not better, has been their goal.

To sports, giving that much to 200 commercials is an outrage.

The commercials haven't gotten their goal, and that's what the fightings been about - the same fight that spawned CCA.

When the commercials can fish with 1% mortality and anglers are at 10% you can bet that SalmonforAll will be at the front of the room demanding a larger share in return for fishing selectively -- as opposed to those filthy, greedy anglers that kill 10%.

Since the below Bonneville catch of upriver fish is firmly linked to and capped by catch-balancing with the Tribes, there will not be any overall increase of the TOTAL kept. We will only be fighting about who catches them - us or them - the allocation battle goes on, and the commercials will have a new compelling argument.

On Spring Chinook, with catch-balancing locked into place, if you want more upriver hatchery fish removed, it's better economics to accomplish this through full sport seasons and increased bag limits. Not giving the commercials an even stronger prescence on the Columbia.

Both the ocean commercial fisheries and the Tribes increasingly selling commercially have developed since the time when the gillnetters ruled. Let the trollers and Tribes now supply the market (that also kicks the legs out from under the fearful argument that without netters there's no hatcheries, complete BS).

We don't need commercial fishing in the lower Columbia, period.

And that ought to be the real question - why commercial fishing at all?

That is the approach CCA takes in other fishery battles, according to TIDE magazine.

Not spending public money to create a kinder, gentler, more entrenched, more dominant commerical fishery.

could you go into alittle detail on how that would work ?

The hatchery fish aren't going anywhere, the tribes produce all the fish needed for market...there's no justifiable reason for a non-tribal commercial fishery except to line the pockets of the few at great expense to the rest of us, and the fish.

Fish on...

Todd

...I agree, or any other commercial fishing technique that has negligible conservation benefits coupled with increased commercial harvest. The low percentage per encounter that die in seines die just as dead as the high percentage per encounter deaths that occur with the gillnets, and the greatly increased encounter rate being contemplated with the seines will result in the same amount dying, just as dead.

The fact that the non-tribal commercials can sell fish is not in any way a justification for them being there to do so...they could sell wild salmon, steelhead, and eagle eggs for omelets, too, but that doesn't mean it makes any sense conservation-wise.

Fish on...

Todd

Selective fishing, including selective commercial fishing, is a great tool, when it's used appropriately. Using it in the LCR in a commercial fishery that is constrained by one thing, and one thing along...allowable ESA impacts...is a waste of time so far as conservation goes, and will definitely make sportfhsing worse.

It only works if it makes more wild fish hit the spawning grounds, or significantly limits the amount of hatchery fish on the spawning grounds, and on the LCR it will do neither. It's sole function will be to reallocate a portion of the sport fleet's hatchery fish to the commercial totes, and no other.

Fish on...

Todd

YUM! Where can I get some eagle egg omelette's at?