typical response from a cca member

Im signing you up Captain Roundabout.

slow at the boat ramps ??

The CCA is supposedly a sportsmans group. My understanding in the very beginning when I first heard about it was it was going to be a group that was going head on with the gillnetters. They were going to get more hatchery fish for the sportsman. They were going to stop the gillnetters from "mopping up" runs of fish...

Quite the contrary really. Seems as if CCA is headed down a path to give the commercials more hatchery fish resulting in less for the sportsman in the CR... Don't you realize that people will walk away from the group when they realize they're being screwed?

I questioned what CCA was doing with the hatcheries seeing how your group supposedly supports them...

You stated CCA supported the following, Seen here:
Hatchery Funding and Reform
Hundreds of hatcheries throughout Washington play a vital role in salmon and steelhead conservation and recovery while also creating sustainable fishing opportunities. Hatchery review efforts illustrate the need for better management of state, federal and tribal hatchery and harvest programs to fulfill these important roles. Unfortunately, many hatcheries lack the funding needed to upgrade these facilities and agencies have not implemented key broodstock management reforms. CCA Washington supports science-based efforts to reform hatchery operations and urges the federal and state agencies to provide the funding and leadership needed to promptly implement these reforms.

Although with your answer I didn't see much merit or what CCA really stands for with hatchery funding and reform...

Hmmm...

Keith

Allow this red-necked Ornamental $25 expert to give it a whirl.

Surplus hatchery spring chinook beyond brood needs can be placed in to 4 piles.

1) Currently the smallest pile is the white gillnet pile. Why? Because ESA caps their wild impact at 1% and their crappy method of "selective" fishing burns those impacts faster than the rec fleet.

2) The next biggest pile of fish is the sport pile. It's 3-4 times bigger than the white gillnetter's pile because our version of "selective" fishing burns thru our 1% impact 3-4 times slower than the other crappy version of "selective" fishing.

3) The next biggest pile is the tribal pile. It's certainly bigger than either of the other two piles, but not quite as big as the other two piles combined. Why? Because even though their crappy version of fishing is totally NON-selective and they burn thru impact as fast as they can catch a wild springer, they are allocated so much more impact that this pile is pretty dam big.

4) But DWARFING all three of those piles is this mountain of hatchery springers that go unharvested. Why? Because the cap on ESA impact does not give any of the three user groups exploiting spring chinook adequate access to those unharvested fish. Collectively, their chosen methods simply burn thru the aggregate allowable impact before they can catch all of those surplus springers that end up in the unharvested pile.

And there's one more kink that needs to be considered. There's a silly little rule that says that the aggregate of Pile 1 and Pile 2 in total CANNOT exceed roughly 1.2 times the size of Pile 3 (assuming a mark rate of 5:1).

Bottom line, these constraints of ESA impact and tribal catch-sharing work in concert to prevent the harvest of spring chinook from being a zero-sum game. Until our native brothers adopt selective methods, Pile 4 will ALWAYS be the biggest pile. And as long as that is the case, the opportunity to maximize the size of Pile 2 to its full potential is ensured..... no if's and's or but's.

So while better and more selective commercial methods will help to increase the size of Pile 1, it does NOTHING to directly affect the size of Pile 2. Those fish (the extra ones transferred to Pile 1) would simply be re-allocated from that ginormous reserve in Pile 4.

But let's not forget a very important caveat in re-distributing these piles. The increment by which Pile 1 would be allowed to increase is SEVERELY limited by that silly little rule I mentioned above. And I do mean SEVERELY.

And it shall remain that way until the tribes find a way to burn their impacts a little slower in order to increase the size of Pile 3. I guess that's a remote possibility right now, but I'm not gonna hold my breath waiting. Besides I'll be too busy harvesting my fair share of Pile 2.

So despite all the guys threatened by the spectre of the boogieman, the sport impact allocation and the access it provides to harvesting recreationally-caught springers is more than safe for the forseeable future.

Trust me.... I'm a $25 expert.

What you mean to say is that the opportunity to harvest that Pile #2 doesn't change...what will change, however, is the amount of fish we get to fish over while exercising that opportunity...and it might change considerably, and not for the betterment of sportfishing.

An allocation is one thing...being good enough to catch it is quite another, and we suck at it...and reducing the numbers of fish that we get to fish over will only make us suck at it worse...perhaps far worse.

Fish on...

Todd

Yep.... we suck at it so bad that we routinely get shut down just as meat of the run shows up.

Nice try.

Well, Boater and Keith for sure!

Of course if groups get better at extracting the resourse in the mainstem then it takes away fish in tribs..

wrong

I'm waiting for the 100,000+ a year experts from NMFS to weigh in on the matter in the spring, that should be a 25 page thread.

what todd is saying is a very basic thing that most every sportsman does when they plan there fishing vacation and that is to plan it durring times that they feel the destination they are going to has the biggest abundance of fish and with this new way commercial fishing starring us in the face thats goal is to extract more hatchery fish that in most cases are the same fish we fish for we will lose that, the very concept of what is happening could be explained to a room of 3rd graders by a few of us and they would understand it but you 25 dollar experts dont appear to have a diploma from the 3rd grade.

plus this goes way beyond spring chinook, it will effect fall fish also

Sounds like they should just allow the fish to pass the LCR then Purse Seine the resevoirs above the Bonneville pool.. But to seine fish below Bonneville is obsurd... Sort them when they get close to their home rivers/destinations..

Keith

Back to the bogey man theories

Nobody nows how the allocation or the seasons will play out -- let alone if selective live capture will ever come to be until testing is done.

No just same old same old, let the tribes do all the heavy lifting. Then sit back and bitch about the way they fish and scheme about ways to catch more of the fish they put into the river. Wanna know what the Columbia would look like without them? Just look at the Sacramento, thats the whitemans river.

Did I just hear "Terminal Fisheries?"

Interesting comment that is more true than not. My non expert $25 expert observation is that some tribes (Yakama Nation for example) seem to do a much better job than others, and the tribal management is all over the board given the diverse systems (sound versus CR) and the general lack of agreement among the tribes and the lack of ethical consistency.

Not anyworse than the white guys..

Thats just flat paranoid.