Well, Salmo, you sure said a mouthful there! Here are a few comments...

First off, the rivers weren't too bad today, so you should have been there. However, I guess it's a little too late to worry about that.

1. Puget Sound/Coastal Fisheries

I think your suggestion that we negotiate for a bigger share with the Indians is right on the money. To do that we need the credibility to come to the table as part of the solution rather than part of the problem (implementing WSR and not fearing or hating the Indians), and we need something to offer as a trade. Money is the obvious "something", and it should be easy to measure what each year's half of the harvestable portion of fish should be worth.

The problem is divvying up the booty between the tribal fishers. It looks like that the NWIFC's solution is to say "treaty rights are not for sale", thereby removing the problem rather than creating a solution. The response, I think, is to deal directly with each NWIFC member tribe and get them on board, either individually or as a group. Let them decide how to divvy up the money...

I think this may be a solution to your first potential problem...

Where does the money come from? For me the answer is pretty clear. It comes from either a general increase in license fees (not that great) or as an additional surcharge to fish rivers where the "deal" has been done (much better). I think this sort of "use tax" puts the burden on those who get the benefit, namely the people who fish that river.

The rest of the details shouldn't be too tough...

Unfortunately, passing WSR evidently isn't as obviously necessary as I think it is...there's a lot of opposition out there. Getting individual tribes to go against the NWIFC and/or Billy Franks, Jr., might be really tough. He's definitely "the man" when it comes to pushing the tribal fishing agenda.

2. I really like your counter-intuitive, reduce the amount of fish to get more argument. Since the harvest is generally based on ESA impact, if a higher percentage of the run is comprised of ESA fish due to less hatchery fish, then the season and quota greatly reduced. As it is, it's not very profitable. This would kill it. Hmmm...great idea!

How difficult would the political battle with the gillnet lobby be? Pretty difficult, I'd guess, but because the economic returns are so overwhelmingly in the favor of sport caught fish rather than netted fish, and money talks, it could be done.

There's also going to be a political battle with NMFS, USFWS, COE, WDFW, and ODFW. There are a lot of bureacrats and buckets of contractor pork out there depending on hatchery fish to keep them useful and to justify the last 100 years of (mis)management.

3. A tribal fishery in a manmade Celilo Falls where hatchery fish are trucked in from Bonneville, released into the fake river and falls, where they are then dipnetted to satisfy treaty rights?

Hmmm.....sounds good, but I think it would turn into a tourist attraction second to none in that part of town. Would that be good? Do you want 10,000 tourists with cameras watching you fish?

"Ooohhh, that was a nice cast." "Wow. He's got one!!!"

Maybe just loading the fish into their pickups would be a better plan?

I'd think that since this is a selective fishery (fish with fins keep swimmin'), that they would be able to harvest more fish overall because their ESA impact would be smaller.

Dividing up fish/profits brings the same problem noted above, namely that it's been avoided as of yet. I don't know how CRTFC views this issue, or if they feel the same as the NWIFC, but I'd be interested in hearing if anyone knows. Salmo? SMalma?

BTW, if it was a drug-induced haze, which drug was it? I gotta get some of that!

Thanks for stepping up to talk about legal, ethical, and effective solutions, rather than the opposites that have been running around the BB's lately.

How do you feel about more widespread use of the treaty allocation as a cash cow for tribal guides, a la the Quinault Nation's guided fisheries? This could also work on most of the other reservations. I suppose they could be charter boats for salmon, too.

What about our chances of changing the tribal managers' minds about tangle nets? If this happened, do you think it would also increase the non-tribal ESA impacts that would be allowed due to the decreased tribal impact? Would the tribal fishers rather use gillnets and keep the non-tribal allowable impact smaller?

Fish on...

Todd.

[ 01-21-2002: Message edited by: Todd ]