Jacobf,

I think the point where your rationale gets questionable is in the assumption that we can accurately predict the escapement. In your example, your math is correct, and the logic holds IF, and this is the big if, we can accurately predict and measure what the return and the escapement will be. What has happened in the last few years, through the el nino cycle, is that we have seen how variable the returns can be. Since the tribes and commercials net at the beginning of the river, and we fish higher up, we will inevitably be at the short end of the stick if the run gets mismeasured. It doesn't matter if we don't get our share, if the run has been over harvested to begin with.

Now, as to the beef that if we don't get 'em, the indians will. I have watched this argument get used to justify poaching and killing of wild fish for over twenty years. I don't know you, so I can't speak to your ethics or motives. I can say however, that most people I have heard use this line were not someone I would call a sportsman. To a person, I would frankly classify them as greedy, ignorant shortsighted fish hogs. Again, I don't know you, and am not going to paste that label on you. The last guy I heard use the line however, did so just after he gaffed an endangered Columbia river summer salmon (closed fishery for YEARS). Yes, gaffed. Not even the pretense that he would release the fish.

And yes, I called the cops on him as fast as I could get to a phone.

But let's see, I got distracted.

Jacob, that rationale you described is of the type that leads to what is called the tragedy of the commons. This refers to how the common grazing land in England got destroyed as population grew. Basically, it refers to the part of human nature and self interest that leads people to maximise benefit to themselves, even as it destroys the resource, because they pereceive that even if they do the right thing for the resource, someone else will simply consume what they don't. Which is what you describe.

Which is why we need to start changing our focus on the resource from consumption to restoration. Because if we don't, who will?