Please, before we make judgements about who will get what fingers into the sockeye pie, please go to the meeting and check it out. Remember, if it weren't for the indians we would not have had a fishery in recent years!

They have invested more time and money just to show WDFW that it could be done. Also the upstream mitigation will help the chinook and steelhead runs. They are the only ones to my nowledge that have rights to harvest this fishery of the native and commercial groups in question. I don't believe that there has been any talk of this changing to refute what has been said on the board already.

Instead of blowing smoke or getting upset try writing the WDFW for what facts they do have and then make a decision and let them know.

They do have a great link on their site about this as well.

Remember - this fishery would not exist without the hatchery. The numbers they are talking about are not huge numbers of fish returning but will possibly allow a more regular sport fishery. The numbers will not support commercial. ( The hatchery raises about 17 million smolts now which account for about 25% of the return or 105,000 fish. They want to produce about 30 million smolts. At best assuming the same rate of return, maybe 40% of the future return.....or 210,000 fish would be hatchery raised on the new hatchery. ) This is based on WDFW/indian return count of 420,000 fish and the percentage of hatchery marked fish caught. The numbers I used were in the papers. We are not talking an large enough increase to allow commercial fishing in the salt folks. Just a few more days for us sportsfishermen to get some great local fishing in and a few more fish for the indians. And best of all.... maybe a predictable fishery.