I see it. But I also know that we don’t even crack the surface when it comes to losing these fish. The WDFW has it wrong. The one thing they can control, that cost them nothing but emails and angry fisherman is closing us down.

Don’t think for one second I don’t care about the resource, or the fish in general. I have a passion for the fish, in grays harbor specifically. I want the best for them, but I’m not willing to give up my passion, culture and Heritage when we aren’t the ones who put us here or will be even a contributing factor to the demise of the fish. I’m not an advocate for over harvest or large bag limits, I just don’t buy the junk science the state pedals about mortality. It’s max 3% in almost every case. It’s 100% darn near in a mono gillnet. Birds don’t differentiate. Neither do seals, chemicals or a myriad of other factors that kill far more salmon and steelhead in the chehalis basin, but yeah…let’s get the one user group that kills a few in the grand scheme of things, the one group that wants their to more fish, let’s get them off the water.

WDFW sucks. They suck at everything. The people in the field may be decent people, I’ve encountered many…but they still espouse the same nonsensical bull that the upper level staff do. I imagine if they had opposing views and made that known they wouldn’t be employed much longer or at least not be considered for management at some point.