The RFA is aware of the Hogan ruling and we are not going to just sit back and do nothing. But that being said, going to court is always our last option. Political action is always a much better option than court. Its much more effective and cheaper than going to court. Only if we don't have any political options available do we go to court.

On this particular issue, after reading the court decision, it seems that judge Hogan was legally correct in his ruling regardless of how unpopular it is. Obviously those groups who brought about the appeal have information that makes them feel differently. We are not currently aware of their strategy.

If someone had came to us with information that the ruling would have short term affects on fisheries, (between now and next fall=short term) then it is very possible that we would have gotten involved in the lawsuit in hopes of keeping the fish listed until the review by NMFS is completed. I can not speak any further to that because I cover Washington State, not Oregon.
There is one other thing to consider. If we (we being sportfishers) are involved with NMFS in the ESA evaluation process we can have some impact, but even if things don't go our way, we still would have had the courts available to us as a last resort. With the appeal, things had better go right for us, because if they don't, NMFS is our last resort.


On catch and release, we have taken some criticism on that. RFA is always trying to build a consensus on issues, but there is clearly not any consensus available on this one.

I can explain our position and it is very well thought out. I don't expect consensus, even within our own organization, but it is based on a logical approach to the issue.

A point to keep in mind. RFA is NOT a conservation organization. We are a political organization. We have conservation in mind but we feel that true conservation can only be accomplished by obtaining equity in the fisheries management process.
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This was my written testimony to the commission:

It is the nation wide position of the Recreational Fishing Alliance that the release of recreationally caught fish should be, in most cases, the ethical and moral prerogative of the angler and that attempting to impose "catch and release" exclusivity is a fishery management tool of the last resort.

In this case, according to state conducted angler survey, a modest majority of steelhead anglers feel that "catch and release" is the preferred management method to meet conservation needs of Wild Steelhead. In deciding whether to impose this management, we ask that the council consider the following items.

1) Does the angler survey conclusively represent the will of the anglers? The RFA does not question the results of the survey as conducted. We do however recommend that commission request conference with the licensed fishing guides that work rivers where Wild Steelhead retention has been allowed. We feel that the commission should have some knowledge of the preference of the two-day license holders that were not included in the survey.
2) Will this management result in the desired conservation? Due to the current system of co-management, there could be legal ramifications that would create the opposite effect and a put a greater burden on some of the Steelhead stocks. We believe that there is a low risk of a "forgone opportunity" claim, but we believe that it still warrants some consideration.
3) The council should know that the majority of anglers we represent have no issue with catch and release of Wild Steelhead as a fishing practice. But the majority also has significant concerns about setting a precedent with a blanket regulation of mandatory release, regardless of species.
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My statement was actually significantly less critical of the proposed regulation than it could have been. Our national position paper on the subject (temporarily located at http://home.attbi.com/~mikegilchrist/catchandrelease.htm ) contains the line "Prohibiting the retention of fish by individual anglers that may be caught and sold by commercial interests is simply unsupportable." Due to the nature of the commercial harvest, we felt it was best not to object on that point here.

We need to be consistent with our positions nation wide. We can not object to these kinds of regulations on the East coast for striped bass and then endorse them here.

The way the comments were worded, it allows the regulation to go into effect if the commission feels that the regulation is critically necessary for conservation of steelhead in every river and therefor a "last resort".