If you are serious about attempting to change the status quo in this State it would be well to be clear about your objectives - are you anti commerical fishing or anti gill nets?

I'm not sure that the claim that the WDFW commission is unfairly tilted towards the commerical industry is true. A quick review of the 9 member's thumbnail bios show that 5 listed themselves as being avid fishers. The sport fishing interest appears to be fairly represented (though heavily tilted to the conservation and quality fishing side). The hunting interest appear to be under-represented (only one listed hunting as an interest - bird hunting and dog bredding). I think your really problem may be with WDFW's legislative mandate - that is to maintain a viable commerical industry. If so changing the commission will accomplish nothing. Perhaps the effort to change the mandate should be directed towards the state legislature, and efforts aimed at the commission would be spend on educating that body to your desires and concerns.

Fishinnut -
While is true that our large chinook (5 and 6 year old) are much rarer today than in the past gill nets have had little to do with their downfall. It has been established that retruning adult fish exposed to heavy gill netting the result is that smaller fish end up spawning- the classic example would be Puget Sound coho. However with chinook the problem is not so much that they are smaller at a given size but rather the adult spawning population has become younger. This is primarily the result of fishing on the immature fish on their feeding grounds. In the case of chinook this means that they are harvests as 3, 4, 5, and 6 years old which greatly reduces that chances of a fish living to be 6 years old. Just an example if there were a constant 30% per year fishing rate in these feeding areas 70% of the fish that mature as 3 year olds would be uncaught, 49% that mature as 4 years would be uncaught, 34% of the 5 year olds, and 24% of the 6s. Clearly the old fish pay a heavy price in those fisheries.

If we wish to see more of those older/larger chinook (and I do) we need to change our fishing patterns and I don't mean ban gill nets (lots of other reason to do so but this is one). The catch of those feeding chinook (blackmouth) is mostly hook and line fisheries -sport, charter, and troll. For Washington chinook those feeding fish are caught in SE Alaska, north, west and east of Vancouver Island, Washington Coast, Straits of Juan de Fuca, and Puget Sound.

We are seeing more older fish this year in large part due to the recent reduced fishing rates in those ocean feeding areas (good feeding conditions results in the fish of a given age being larger than normal but not older). If older chinook are desired than we as a group need to lobby for less fishing on immature fish and as individuals decide not to fish those areas.

Those anglers that opt to fish chinook on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, SE Alaska, the Washington Coast etc are very much part of the problem of younger Washington chinook (more so than gill nets). This would doubly be true of those anglers that release smaller chinook (teen agers) in hope of larger fish (30+#). That practice is clearly selecting against having older spawnig and pass on that genetic trait.

Past "ban the nets" efforts have failed in part due to its supports not having done all their home work (generally angler apathy did help either). If you are serious I encourage you to clearly state your goals, what a realistic expectation of what those goals will do for the resource, the various fisheries and economies. One false claim or arguement opens the whole effort to attack.

Just my $.02.

Tight lines
Smalma