Rob

Believe it or not I often agree with some of your comments. I respect your passion for the issues even though I slam you from time to time. I think Spring Chinook netting on the Columbia is shameful and needs to be stopped. I really believe if WT would have continued to work on that with PSA and others we would probaably be on the same side. Too many wild fish are killed in that fishery and that is a documented fact.

Your idea to have small rivers free of hatchery fish is fine as long as you would agree to not wet a line in any of them regardless of C&R. If your goal is simply to have what I have called "boutique" fisheries then I am against that. We should not be saving "wild" fish for the catch and release benefit of the small group that wants only that type of scenario.

As far as sports fishers being unwilling to sacrifice and give up things...WOW have we ever sacrificed. Look at the current closure of crabbing for example. We take only 15% of the catch meaning 85% commercial and we are shut down across the board so the 85% crowd can harvest their "share"...same with shrimping only worse. The allocations of the salmon and steelhead stocks will be coming up for 2004 soon and you can see how much sacrifice sportsmen have endured while the commercial harvesters keep on killing wild fish by the thousands....then there is the co-management side with their incredible take of wild fish.

Yes Rob we need to reform hatcheries and probably close some. We need a balanced approach so if we close a hatchery we don't allow commercial netting in the migration path of any of the wild fish returning to the area we are trying to revive wild fish in without hatcheries and without sports fishing.