Keep writing your legislators, and perhaps throw in the numbers that the Kid just came up with. Even the Southwest Washington idiots in the legislature should be able to count votes. Why not classify any fish or shellfish that can be fully exploited by a recreational fishery as a "Recreational Species"? I don't know about the rest of you, but put me in front of springers and I WILL catch them

One of the biggest problems with Columbia River fish management is that for some reason all the managing agencies are fixated on formulas that use CPUE of gillnets to predict run size. Why, I have no idea, I mean there is plenty of CPUE of recreational data to compare to actual counts going over Bonneville, and a formula should be pretty simple to figure out from that. Particularly with springer fishermen at Cathlamet you have a huge sample size and a high catch rate (well, I do, and I get checked all the time :p ). 'Bout all I can figure is with gillnetters they put an observer on board so the counts of hatchery vs. wild are accurate, and there is a perception that not all sportsfishermen report that they caught a wild fish as they think that lying about having released a bunch of wild ones will save quota or something. IF there are any of you out there who routinely do this, got news for ya, because they have those gillnetters they know exactly what the hatchery/wild ratio is. An if at the end of the day the sport report is way heavy towards hatchery fish, they KNOW you lied, and they have the best excuse in the world to keep the damn gillnetters working