Thanks for the kind words, Challenged and Fish4Steel. Here are my answers to your questions, Challenged.

Challenged asked:

1) Why is the state so concerned over the "foregone opportunity" issues? Will this increase the tribes catch before it reaches the CnR fishing grounds?

I can't help but feel that the state is so wedded to catch and kill because that's the way they have always done it. To change pace now would be tantamount to admitting that they were wrong in the first place and that ocean conditions and Indians weren't the only causes for declining fish runs. Therefore, when all credible science points to the validity of cnr as a scientific, economic, and sociological factor in returning our native fish runs to anything at all like historical levels, scare tactics and questionable justifications must be used to defend their untenable positions.

The proposal language lamenting the fear of foregone opportunity smacks of 1950's moms telling their daughters that they'll get pregnant if they kiss a boy in the back of a car. The only published case that ever even remotely dealt with this issue said that the 50/50 split rule from the Boldt decision requires only that each party be given the opportunity to harvest their half of the fish, not that they necessarily get harvested. If more than half of the harvestable portion of a run is netted in the lower river by tribal fishers then non-tribal fishers have been denied their opportunity.

The foregone opportunity doctrine at worst doesn't mean anything, and at best supports our ability to have cnr seasons.

Challenged further asked:

2) Isn't CnR a greed? Would it be better to close systems until fishable CnR levels exist? What are fishable levels for CnR? or is there a even threshold we need to be concerned with?
In a perfect world fishing would have no impacts.


Yes, it would be better to close systems until fishable cnr levels exist. Anyone who wants to cnr fish in a run that can't even handle the level of mortality associated with cnr is just as greedy as a catch and kill advocate.

In Washington, cnr seasons are closed if the preseason projection for a stream is less than 80% of the calculated escapement for that stream. However, not all streams have escapement levels set, or they are arbitrary, and preseason projections are inaccurate due to our lack of knowledge about the marine life cycle of steelhead, and in-season run assessments are nonexistent. The state manages a lot of steelhead runs in a vacuum of ignorance. Even the runs that have enough available information to manage via current management schemes are managed ignorantly because current management schemes (read that as Maximum Sustained Yield) don't take enough into account to make an informed and scientifically justifiable decision about how many we should kill.

One of the reasons I support cnr of native steelhead is that very lack of knowledge. Here's a thumbnail sketch of how MSY affects our fisheries; With a lack of key information, we guess at what the minimum amount of fish are required to spawn so that extinction will be staved off for one more generation. With a further lack of key information, we guess at what a future run of fish that we know very little about will number next year. Every fish that we guess will be above and beyond the number we guessed that will be needed to spawn will be killed, no guess about that one.

Doesn't it make sense to be on the safe side by not killing the fish when we don't know what escapement should be, what it actually is, and how many fish are actually returning next year?

I guess I am greedy as a cnr advocate. I want to fish for native steelhead for the rest of my life. I also want my kids, and grandkids, and their kids and grandkids, to have the chance to do it, too. I want an icon of the Pacific Northwest to be a reality rather than a memory. I want all the communities and businesses that rely on native steelhead fisheries to have continued economic success well into the future. I want the many small towns that lost their entire economic well being due to overharvest of trees, or salmon, to at least have steelhead fishing to hang their hat on well into the future.

As you can see, I'm pretty greedy. It's all about me... .

Fish on...

Todd.