Please bear with me this is a little lengthy.

I recently (early Jan.) made a discovery of somehting that I am embarassed to say , I wasn't even aware existed. I was scanning through old info on the WDFW website and saw that they had a call for nominations to a "Sports Fishing Advisory Board". The news release was dated 11/28 (the day before Thanksgiving) and nomination were due by 12/7. This only allowed 5 working days to respond . The contact person was Pat Patillo(WDFW).

Being curious and somewhat suspicious, I wrote an e-mail asking why so little time was given for response and I also requested a list of the board members. The response that I got back was "...we needed to get the new members before the end of the year and we had some problems with the initial notice to the public being late." When I reviewed the list of members I received, I noticed some of the names right away as having been opponents of I-696.

I sat in on a meeting of this board that was held in Olympia last week. Come to find out, this is one of the groups of people that will be representing our sportsfishing interests and advising WDFW in the North of Falcon process. I was amazed and appalled to find out how many commercial fishermen and commercial interests were represented on the "Sports Fishing Advisory Board" . Some of the same people who are commercially raping our waters of the resource are sitting in a room dictating to the WDFW and any sports interests who are members how they feel the resources should be managed for sportsmen . And the department personnel new these guys on a first name basis and were soaking this all up. WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!?!? THIS REALLY OPENED MY EYES !!!!

The WDFW and Jeff Koenings have said that they want to get the public more involved in setting policy and seasons. There will be a public meeting held by WDFW on February 22 at the Lacey Community Center. The meeting will likely last a good portion of the day. There will be regional forecasts given and there will be discussions on regional fisheries. It is not yet clear how much public input will be allowed and whether department policy/strategy in the North of Falcon Process will be discussed. I plan to take the day off and spend it at this meeting. I would hope that we could pack this building with concerned sportsfishermen who are interested in the future of our resources. Could everyone please help to get the word out?!