Leaky Boot
We are all entitled to voice our own opinions, but I for one just don't understand your logic! It is my understanding that those so call "boat bands" on the smaller rivers had nothing to do with the protection of the fish; it had everything to do with the protecting and the prevention of conflicts between bank and boat fishermen! By that, I mean the agencies apparently decided to take such actions, because of the direct impute and demands from local fishers who wanted to stop any possible conflict before it may even get started between the bank fishers and drift boaters. You need to do a search and read all the impute on a thread called "Why does the "Willapa" have float restriction" I think that you will become much more informed about this issue after reading this thread.

There is plenty of impute as to why we have put boating restrictions on some of our smaller rivers. Almost none of floating restrictions that I know of were put on these rivers for fish protection.

Some species like salmon prefer deeper holding water, especially in mid sized rivers such as the Cowlitz or the Lewis. How do expect fishermen to fish for such species if they can't fish from a boat? How do you expect fishermen to use plugs or divers for bait if more then one fishermen were to be fishing in such an area? How would fishermen use their plugs or divers if they could not pull their baits or plugs behind their boat?

Your logic is comparable to something like this; you can use your car when need to travel to work only. You can not use your car for any other business, nor can you tow anything behind your car. You can still ride around all day long in your car if you want to, but you can not use it for anything else!

I don't really want to beat up on you, but when you make crazy unfounded statements like "I simply think harvesting is the biggest problem the fish face. My take on the way to control harvest is to make the use of all boats (sport and tribal) transportation only." you can expect to get some pretty negative responses from this board. There just isn't that much room for more then one or more fishermen to fish from that buoy out there at buoy 10!

It seems that we all have learned the hard way on this board; when you say something, you better be prepared to back up your statements with some sort of facts (even if they are the wrong facts). Again, sorry for the chew-out, and I will be looking forward to reading your future posts when you add just a little more facts to such wacky statements.

Anyway, that my opinion!

Cowlitzfisherman