Wild stock Chinook Salmon in Puget Sound are on the Endangered Species List!! I hope all of you participating in the Elliot Bay fishery/circus, stop for a minute, and think about that. The ONLY reason this fishery exists, is so the Muckleshoot Gambling Tobacco and Fishing Corp., can legally get it's nets in the water. By sharing the catch with "sportsmen", in accordance with the Boldt Decision, they have met their legal requirements. All of a sudden the unclipped hatchery returnees have become "wild stock", making it look like there are more returning natives, than is actually the case. The idea of penning up the "sportsmen" for a 3 day kill-em-all fishery on an endangered species disgusts me. If you truly want to help this endangered run, don't kill them, don't buy them, and don,t eat them, enjoy some great C&R fishing instead. For those of you, who choose to participate, all I can say, is Baaaaaad choice.

I think that it's interesting that when Bruce Crawford, then head of the WDFW fisheries program, was faced with the same decision last year he told the tribes no. Of course when Bern Shanks was forced out, Jeff Koenings moved Bruce out of fish management and into the highly important license sales division.

Hey Preston, always enjoyable, to read your input. Do you have any information, on why the 2 oz. restriction was taken away in area 10 this year??

Interesting post, but there are some things that I am unclear on. First, legaly there is nothing requiring the Muckleshoot tribe to give the sportsman a shot at these fish. They get 50% of the harvestable regardless of whether WDFW lets us harvest our share or not. Second, I am not sure why you feel there would be and error separating wild fish from hatchery fish. The test fisheries used to determine the strength of this run have been in place for several years now, well before any fin clipping. So they obviously must have some other way of sepparating wild fish from hatchery fish other than just looking for a fin.

I personally am not fishing this fishery because of difficult access and such, but I honestly do not see the problem with a stricly regulated fishery on a healthy wild stock. Besides, Green river hatchery fish were actually taken from the Green river so you don't have nearly the problems with this river as some of the others around the sound. Am I missing something?

Baugh! www.wa.gov/wdfw/do/newreal/jul2700a.htm

I have yet to catch one, but I fully intend to keep trying.

Good Luck.
Jeff

Thinker, I'm not up on all of the N.W. fishery legalise, just speaking from my heart. I was under the impression, that for the last few years, we traded our share of elliot bay fish, for a longer blackmouth season in area 10. I agree with you that these salmon are all from green river stocks, but that does not make any fish that isn't clipped, a native. The only way a fin-clipping program can truly work, is to start it the first year you release the smolts, otherwise, how do you know if the fish you are taking eggs and milt from, are hatchery or natives? If anybody knows of another method of differentiating native/wild fish, I would be interested to hear about it. Also, if there is another method, do the hatcheries use use it? Regardless of the fact that these fish all came from the same stock, fish spawned in hatcheries are raised on fish pellets,are exposed to diseases, and are just not as strong as their native brothers, who have always spawned naturally. Anyway, with all the buzz and hoopla about saving salmon in seattle, and with the ESA putting them on the endangered list, I'm saddened by the fact, that this early in the recovery process, our various managers-biologists-lawyers have decided that it is OK to have both commercial and sport seasons on this run. Just my .02 worth.

DanO,
I don't have a clue, in fact I didn't even know the two-ounce restriction had been lifted in area 10. It's a shame that they aren't required to provide explanations along with some of these detail changes that don't seem to have any logical reason. I'm not a hardcore salmon fisherman (my salmon fishing being pretty much limited to casting a fly from the beach) so a lot of this stuff slips by me.