At the invitation of my fishing buddy and President of the Whitewater Boaters Association of Oregon Bill Heater, I attended their monthly meeting last night. Their guest speaker was a rep of the NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service), who now has taken over the states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho in regulation of fish allocation and management decisions of the Columbia River (and other region watersheds). The NMFS rep was a mid-Columbia hatchery specialist. And a nice fellow. After speaking at length with him I can understand better the tough Gov. mandates those guys work under. However, he could not defend the NMFS position regarding Col. salmon allocation between Col. Tribal netters and non-Indian user groups. In response to my question of how negotiations are going for next year's huge springer run he said, as it's stands now, it's likely to fall at 9.2% ESA impact to the Indians and 2.5% to non-Indians. While this is better than last spring's fiasco of 8% to Indians and 0.5% to non-Indians, it still falls way short of what we feel is fair! Apparently the States of Oregon and Washington feel that way too and are expected to proceed with their lawsuit against the "Unfair Pair". He did give some specific insight to why these allocations don't follow the 50/50 Treaty splits called for; the U.S. government has taken the Indian position that since the dams have reduced the runs so significantly that the Col. tribes deserve more of the allocation. I do understand that reasoning, but do the Indians use electricity from BPA and other dams? Yes. When I brought up that, unlike Indian gillnetters, sportfishers can fish selectively by C&R of non-clipped fish he said that some of the clipped fish we will harvest are broodstock fish propogated from native fish stock that they want a good return from; thus a limiting factor to a sportfish allocation. He agreed with my position that they should have clipped those broodstock fish on the ventral fin, so that with the vast majority of the 300,000+ fish returning being regular hatchery springers with most being adipose finclipped would be available for a big sportfish allocation. Hopefully the NW State's lawsuit will help bring about these proper changes, and will help get us more than a 2.5% ESA impact allocation on next spring's huge run.
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Know fish or no fish. - RT

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