Simply stop hatchery production........

If BC and AK want to have the lower 48 provide them with the fish then send money.

I would add, though, that BC, particularly, has avoided serious screwing up the Fraser because the fish were important. We DID have that choice on the Sacramento, Klamath, Columbia and chose dams over fish. Perhaps we need to live with our decisions?????

Maybe terminal/extreme terminal fisheries is a commom theme that commercials (Tribal and Non Tribal) and sport anglers could work together on in the Puget Sound area.

As an incentive, there were 45 salmon canneries around Puget Sound in their heyday, before ocean fisheries.

That’s a “lotsa” salmon.

It doesn't sound too unreasonable to me for Alaska residents to look at it that way.

Here's a thought....

As many of you know Grays Harbor's management plan has what is called 4/3.......4 days in a week, nets are allow to fish the lower river, 3 days NO nets.....

This plan, while only 1 year old, was to allow salmon to get past the "nets of death" and help in the conservation of these fish AND to allow a sport fishery in the upper basin.

Has the plan caused a few problems, yes but the positive out weights the negative. NT gill netters hate it, limits the days for them....QIN can net the 4 days in the week, this shuts the door for the NT netters.

Wouldn't it be nice if the tribes, on the coast, would limit the netting of the Humptulips, the Quinault, the Hoh, the Queets, and rivers in the Forks area......to 4/3 sure might help in conservation and increase Native stocks.

Just my opinion....

One of the MAJOR obstacles to any management program in this state is transparency. It almost seems this is by design. To keep the three major players at odds with each other. Take the North of Falcon process for example. Why are the negotiations with the NT Commercial guys taken off to a separate room? Why are the Tribal negotiations done in private?

As long as the various groups appear to be doing things in secret, there will be distrust and suspicion. When we cant trust the other party, then the tendency is to assume the worst. I'm so tired of being sidelined by decisions made between the Co-managers and the NT Commercials that we had no input or recourse at all. I understand that their point of view is that we (recreational sportsmen) are not in it for a living. We don't rely on the fish for a livelihood, so in the big picture, we don't really count as far as how the "MEAT/MONEY" is managed.

There is no incentive, in fact, no reason at all that they should be transparent other than the conservation and well being of the stocks. But in reality, they will continue to pound the hell out of the stocks with the mindset that if "they" don't get the money from them, "someone else" will.

There is a movement to move recreational fishing to C&R. It seems wonderful and all warm and fuzzy to think by doing so we will be helping the stock recovery. But the sad truth is, the beautiful fish you gently handle and release unharmed swims away and gets tangled and dies in a nylon net! (or, that is the perception) so why not bonk it and put it in your freezer.After all, if you don't, someone else will!

Drifter

With regards to Fall Salmon, the Hoh and Quillayute are already doing that if not more days out. The last few years the Quillayute's have fished Monday mornings to Wednesday afternoons/evenings. A few years before that they were going to Thursdays. Over the last 15-20 years the days have varied. The Quillayute's have had a major affect on the Fall Kings and I've been told they are working to reduce that. One major problem is how efficient the tribes are by stringing nets way into the rivers, drift netting and driving the fish with motors and poles. They take a lot of fish.

We've had our issues over there with snagging, poaching etc of Fall Salmon. The National Park changing their rules last year so they didn't match WDFW and not telling anyone didn't help. I could go on and on about the bad behavior I saw last year. Hope is that enforcement by the Park and WDFW will be more relevant in 2015 since both Wild King & Coho stocks are down.

Blu13:

Thanks....I don't know about Fall salmon but I know there is a concern about "Springers", thus the shut down to sports during the period of time above.

I remember in the late 80's salmon and summer run steelhead were available.....netting was done closer to the ocean...then they moved the nets up to Allen Bar....I stopped fishing up there.

Drifter

I haven't fished the Hoh as much over the last 10 years. I go through spurts. I do know at one point they were fishing all the way up to 101. I watched them Drift Net one year through a spot near 101 a little way below the bridge. They actually moved their days up to a Sunday because the river was dropping. That kind of pissed me off because we had made the trip down from other rivers after we were told there were fish there.

Another thing that I didn't like seeing a few years ago was at Cottonwood, late (last day) in the Hoh's fall season I watched a guy empty his net. All dark Coho killed and dumped because they weren't sell-able.