bodysurf

Trust me, when they won a fish and it shows that they have a coded wire tag, they get their heads cut off! They take all coded wire tags from both chinook and coho. Here a perfect example of what they are now doing; "Tacoma Fish Report dated May 27, 2003: A total of 203 spring chinook adults and 134 spring chinook jacks were donated to the local S.O.M.M.A. food bank during the past week. Coded wire tags containing study information were recovered from these fish prior to their donation to the food bank"

Well if they are waking 203 adults a week on Springer's, you can just image how many coho are going to get it when there are 10,000 a week returning!

And your answer to your second question; I can not say for sure what the "reason" is for our large return of coho, but experts much better informed then me have said it is most likely due to the "great ocean conditions" that we have been experiencing in the last several years. I tend to agree with them.

They can sell ALL of these fish to the dog and cat processors even if they have been exposed to benzocaine or MS22. They can also let people eat them if they hold the exposed fish for 30 days without any additional or new treatments or exposures of theses drugs. That's the way it was 2 years ago, and I do not believe that they have change as of yet.

Cowlitfisherman