It's was short but sweet! http://www.wa.gov/wdfw/do/newreal/jul1200a.htm

Yup, it was short. That's apparently the new fishery plan for the state. Give the suckers a couple days here and there, maybe a week or two on silvers, charge them lots more for the "annual license" and hire more fish cops.

What a joke and to think the WDF got people to buy lots of licenses to fund more mismanagement. Sad...so sad.

Couldn't possibly be glad fishable numbers of sockeye returned this year, could ya. Gotta piss and moan about whatever happens. There have been many good people in WDFW over the years, they have just run into a huge political stone wall of the interests that profit from activities distrucive to salmon .

Some Q's come quickly to mind. I wonder how much the Ballard Locks Indian netting (see other post thread) had to do with the WDFW's sockeye run prediction revision downward by 45,000 fish?? I also want to know if those socks slaughtered at Ballard are counted into the Lake quota given to the Indians? If not, how do they come up with these predictions and allocations? Are the daily counts for the Lake made after the Indian netting below the locks take place? Hmmm. - RT

Why are the Nooksack's and the Lummi 's netting the Locks? The Muckleshoots net the lake, this is understandable because of the tribe's location. But how do the nooksack's and the Lummi's come into play on the Sockeye fishery?

[This message has been edited by salmontackler (edited 07-12-2000).]

I'm beginning to believe that no matter how good or how bad the fishing, fishermen will whine no matter what. A fishery like the Lake Washington sockeye is opened and closed based on the best information anyone has. The best fishery information happens to be estimates. Estimates are nothing more than reasoned guesses. Well, one alternative that is very conservation oriented in favor of the fish is to never allow any fishing anywhere because the run might be lower than the managers think. Or try the opposite: open all fishing everywhere, all the time. Oops! We tried that one for several decades, and it got us into the mess we find ourselves today. The middle of the road approach seems to be to use estimates based on good information, and permit fishing accordingly. When the available information changes, change the regulation of the fishery. That is, allow a longer season, higher catch limit, or close it, if need be.

And let's recall that dead fish don't spawn. Reel Truth wants to know if "those socks slaughtered at Ballard are counted into the Lake quota given to the Indians?" A couple comments seem warranted. If sockeye caught be Indians are slaughtered, what was it that happened to the 13,000 sockeye caught in the July 4th recreational fishery? Slaughtered, or merely captured and creeled? See what I mean?

Reel Truth is an intelligent person who knows that those fish caught by the Indians and removed from the spawning population are no more dead than those taken on hook and line. I'm not wanting to bash RT here, but I do want to be emphatic that we sporties are not on any high moral ground here. A dead fish is a dead fish, gillnet or hook, they don't spawn.

Further, nobody "gave" the Indians a quota. Is it really so easily forgotten that the tribes are simply exercising a treaty reserved right? Nobody "gave" any tribe a quota or fishing right. The government, and subsequently the courts, simply acknowledged that Indians have possessed these rights since time immemorial, long before the treaties were made. Which is why the rights were included in the treaties.

These flippant and sarcastic comments about treaty Indian fishing are sometimes irresistable, and I've made my share. However, they can only have as their basis either racism or ignorance. It seems there's a bit of latent racism in many of us. I cannot claim ignorance about the issue; how about you?

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Racism is ignorence!

Land Tuna, oh how I couldn't agree with you more on your statement "racism is ignorance" Wouldn't it be nice if everyone had to buy the same licenses, pay the same taxes, hunt the same seasons, basically live under the same rules? Wouldn't that be true equality? Rasism exists when one party is set aside from another. There are many different aspects of it but it all starts because someone is being treated differently..So I would suggest trying to live as one nation and not separate people by their race.. I don't the natives will agree with me on this one, I wonder why?!?

I'm shure there is an element of racism in the way some people look at tribal netting, but as I read through this site and others like it I see a lot of posts by people who seem to buy into the propaganda put out by groups like Columbia River Alliance, Pacific Legal Foundation and the realtors Common Sense Salmon Recovery. The theme of these groups is that there are miles and miles of unused river habitat and if we could just stop the commercials from netting 97%of the returning salmon we would have salmon coming out our ears. They ask why should we make any changes in dams, development, logging and agri practices ect. when it's the nets that are causing the problem. The commercials own the WDFW and no one should believe anything they say. Dosn't this line make salmon recovery so nice and simple? It lets us all off the hook, or almost all of us. We don't have to change anything, bussines as usual.
Now it doesn't matter how regulated or how well monitored or how clean a fishery is, when the nets hit the water the screaming begins.

[This message has been edited by Neanderthal (edited 07-13-2000).]

Neanderthal, can you name the only inland waterway in North America that still allows commercial fishing? PUGET SOUND!!! During WWII comercial fisherman were allowed to fish in Puget Sound for a subsistance means, this fishery was never intended to go beyond War time. The commercial lobby was able to sway the historty of this fishery and the commercials somehow gained the right to fish in Puget Sound.

I also understand that the early closure of the sockeye fishery wasn't due to the falling numbers of incomming fish, but the major reason for shutting down Lake Wa to sporties, was the fact that 20 plus non-tribal commercials were petioning for a fishery in the lake!

Yup, these are only rumors in the sporty industry. But I firmly believe than non-tribal commercials have no business in the state of Washington.

Washington= Another non-commercial state!!

Commercials add nothing to the fishery! No money, no conservation. They only take, take, take.

If anyone is interested in reading a good book on the subject of salmon management in the NW, try Salmon Without Rivers by Jim Lichatowich. Anyone else had any good reads lately???