Watch the Schmitten clip again…. second one on dogfish's youtube links.

The key words in his quote are "if possible"

My interpretation is that if the tribe fishes 4 days in a calendar week, it IS possible.

If the tribe fishes 5 days in a calendar week, it is NOT possible.

Whenever the tribe nets fish 4 days, the bigger question is whether the state comm fishers will fish "in common with" i.e. concurrently with tribal fishers, or whether the QIN will object and keep the state nets from fishing at all.

Anytime the tribe fishes 3 days or less per week, there is opportunity for state nets without having to fish "in common with".

Wish I coulda been there for this one... thank you, thank you, thank you for those that went, those that testified, and for the youtube links!!!

The question on if the QIN do 4 days or 5 days it means no NT Commercial. Now it is up to the agency and the QIN to work this out as the mechanisms are not defined. If in a week the QIN does three or less then opportunity exist for NT commercial IF it fits with in the other guidelines.

This is a work in progress so this is not a done deal. We must all stay with the process until it is finalized and the management plan & processes adjusted.

It was a great meeting and I was very proud of many from the PP family who spoke up for change. Good job today everyone, now let's see this through to the finish!

CM

I gota believe that PA will do whatever he can do to get NT fishing time......He was not a happy camper today.

I thought that the Commission said that there "will be" 3 net free days in all areas.

I'm not sure the QIN will be able be net 5 days a week during the salmon season.....I'm thinking that if they tried WDFW might have to take a stand...

Thanks to all who attended. I caught most of the public comments and the beginning of Schmitten. I'm glad to see the angle his remarks seemed to be taking (seemed to be setting up to absolve the State of accountability for missed escapements) wasn't representative of the whole commission discussion; looks like the good stuff came after him.

Like others, I'm concerned that the Tribe has potential to spoil the whole party. It seems to me they generally don't net more than 4 days per week during the peak season as is (3 or 4 days/ wk. seems to be their usual thing), but if the non-tribal commercial fishery is either significantly reduced or eliminated altogether, they might play the dreaded "foregone opportunity" card and increase their own efforts, thereby negating any meaningful conservation savings. I'm not confident they'll be receptive to any rule that limits the number of days they can fish in a given week, at any rate, even if it doesn't reduce their overall opportunity. Sovereignty can be a bitch. I hope my concern here proves to be unfounded; the 4/3 split would be HUGE for the sport fishery and conservation.

More wild fish hitting the gravel also means more hatchery fish not being harvested, and that will probably lead to reduced hatchery plants (for coho, anyway), which is probably not such a big deal, especially if the wild runs continue to increase as a result. Just a neutral observation....

Either way, I think the discussion is moving in the right direction as regards what the State CAN control, and that represents real progress toward meaningful change. So far, there is reason to be hopeful, which is more than we've had around here in quite a while.

The biggest conservation piece that was neglected is the issue of aggregating chum basin wide.

Fish committee made it a point to emphasize how important it was to segregate escapement objectives for Chehalis/Hump for chinook and coho.

How about chum?

Definitely a double standard going on here.

At least we got another butt in a seat!Thanks for attending! Numbers DO count! As far as sour grapes go it sounds like you already have a barrel full.I like mine gently fermented. You allude to "You all have no idea of what's going on" but you still managed to attend. I would suggest a good listening of "what's going on?" by Marvin Gaye, it may give you some insights. I am glad you were able to get recordings.Thanks to all that attended, I really think none of this would have been possible without endless hours of meetings attended by a few and the final push attended by many. Bob R

Francis,

I also noticed that the Commission Fish Committee omitted chum salmon from the separate escapement issue. I think we need to continue to bring that issue up, understanding that reform happens at glacial speed. It's important to keep the chum issue in front of the Commission because R 6 will use the chum aggregation as rationale to schedule additional NT gillnet days in late Oct, ostensibly to prevent a dangerous coho over-escapement, while the Chehalis chum take a shellacking. And probably end up over-harvesting wild coho while they're at it.

I want to bring up the subject of hatchery salmon in the Chehalis basin again. Ron Warren's presentation showed hatchery chinook as only 8% of the Chehalis chinook population. I don't expect the Chehalis to ever be a big time chinook producer because of habitat quality issues, but total natural production potential remains significant. If the hatchery fish don't add that much, I think they might just be a liability to good management of the wild run. Since the Quinault Tribal policy is that hatchery and wild fish are equal, they have no incentive to manage for the wild escapement goal. If there were no hatchery chinook to buffer wild escapement shortfalls, then they risk their own interest by over-fishing wild chinook.

Same with coho. I'm open to the notion that Gray's Harbor fishery health and better recreational fishing might result by managing the Chehalis as wild salmon only, meaning closing the Satsop hatchery. It seems like the presence of hatchery salmon simply feeds the monster of commercial gillnetting at any cost in the Harbor, which is clearly detrimental to both the wild runs and recreational salmon fishing.

Natural production of coho would provide good sport fishing most years and a productive commercial fishery for the QIN. Chinook and chum would mostly be taken as incidental to coho fishing. I don't ever see a significant terminal area chinook fishery as long as Alaska and BC fish them.

Sg

To add to Salmo's thoughts, managing for wild fish (the caveat being that the escapement goals are more in line with ecological needs) will have you fishing on significantly more fish. The season might (will?) be shorter, the kill limit small, but the actual number of fish out there will be way larger which means the angler will encounter more fish and probably more fish quickly. Some might view that as better fishing.

Well lets do this. The hatchery Chinook ( Chehalis side ) come from the East Fork Satsop, are broodstocked each year and are the primary tool used to rebuild the stock as it had been harvested down to levels that almost wiped it out and restrained all mainstream harvest. You guys need to quite packing hatchery v wild issues from other streams / regions into the Chehalis. It has always been managed for natural production of all species and NOT maximized to harvest down to hatchery escapement. That it has been mismanaged for the natural production is apparent but that had zip, zero, nada, just plain nothing to do with hatchery production numbers.

Now in the case of the Humptulips one can make a case for the hatchery influence being to great ( and it is particularly with Coho ) but it is a different scenario than the Chehalis.

More video links of the Commission Meeting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTPBQN4uOqs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTPBQN4uOqs

Big thanks to those who took the time to attend the meeting and thank you Dogfish for posting the testimonial videos here...

Region 6...The Rogue Region! Very grateful that we have watchdogs like you guys.

Ike

Just so that everyone understands exactly what Commissioner Schmitten said in his final piece on allocation… he stated the comm share would be 0.8%.

That 0.8% is in the context of the following breakout.

50% treaty share…. 100% of which goes to the QIN.

The remaining 50% is the NON-treaty (NT) share. By historic agreement, 16.5% of that half goes to NT tribal share (Chehalis) and 83.5% goes to the state share. Said another way the Chehalis tribe gets 8.25% vs the state's 41.75% vs QIN's 50% to get back to the original 100% of the harvestable fish.

The state's 41.75% share of total harvestable is now proposed to be allocated 0.8% comm and 39.95% rec. In other words, the non-tribal state share of harvestable chinook shall be managed for a roughly 2:98 split.

That folks, is what the commission voted to approve on Saturday.

Now on the Hump side (2c) the comm share is much easier to spell out. Commission proposes 1.2% of the harvestable chinook share goes to commercial.

Treaty share is once again 50%…. 100% of which goes to the QIN. The NT share is also 50%. Since there is no other tribe to deal with, the state share is 100% of the NT share.

1.2% of the harvestable chinook comes out to 2.4% of the state share. In other words the state share of Hump chinook shall be split nearly 2:98.

Basically means all the comm chinook allocation will be burned as release mortality to access available coho and/or chum.

At the same time this discussion is going on I'm rereading "King of Fish", how we don't learn from the past is amazing.

It was a great show of people on Saturday. It was nice to meet a few of you and wish I could have met more.

And thank you very much to the people that spoke and said what most were thinking (especially the husband/wife combo, they were great).

I wish I would have gotten video of them.

Well they have been at EVERY meeting on the GHMP redo including Adviser meetings to observe. They kayak fish toward Oakville and frankly have put in the effort to learn and address the issues. I regard them as our secret ( not so much now ) weapon as they are a tag team on point and just say it like it is. Great pair of citizen activist.

Let's keep the momentum up folks. It's evident after Friday's vote that the commission has heard the voice of the recreational community LOUD and clear. But the battle is NOT over. They've stepped out in good faith to support us. We MUST return that good faith in kind.

Specifically, the commission needs to hear from YOU!

WDFW will be posting a link to a PDF of the latest draft which will have incorporated the commission's 5 recommendations to the policy

If nothing else, send in a public comment of support for the 5 recommendations, saying simply,

"Thank you commissioners for your recent recommendations to the Grays Harbor Management Policy. I applaud and support your efforts to not only make Grays Harbor a better place TO FISH, but a better place FOR FISH!"

If you have more time to invest, feel free to comment in more detail about any conservation/harvest/allocation issues important to you that you feel are not adequately addressed, and remember to identify any language that could be phrased for better accuracy, precision, and/or accountability.

You can be assured that ALL your comments will be read and heard by the commission. But remember, so too will those of the other side which would seek to foil the new recommendations. We outnumber them by 2-3 orders of magnitude so drowning out the naysayers in the arena of public opinion should be a slam dunk.