Slug,

Thanks, I think. I know enough to know that there is a lot that I’m not qualified to explain, and I usually try to stop at that point. Happy New Year!

Rich,

Yes, I think WDFW always has a choice to listen to the public or not. If a large enough public - and this BB is a very tiny public - sponsors a biologically and socially and legally sound management policy, then the odds of WDFW adopting it are high.

Treaty tribes have the right to adopt whatever management policies they wish, so long as they don’t reduce the value of the non-treaty right or jeopardize the fishery resource. Of course, there is a lot of room for legal wrangling over terms like “reduce the value of . . .” and “jeopardize.” Terminal area river gillnet harvests of steelhead are not likely to ever be “precise,” in my opinion. Real-time management relies on estimates, and a certain amount of error is generally assured.

Foregone opportunity is real as a concept, but legally untested as far as I know as a matter of allocation law. Thus far, both tribes and WDFW have had their reasons to avoid adjudication and alleviating the vagueness. I generally disfavor hanging out in areas of political or legal vagueness, with its inherent switching of positions as the occasion merits. I’m of the “call this spade a shovel” philosophy and prefer to be clear about meanings. Since the concept remains untested, it remains available to use as a scare tactic or whatever other need suits a person or entity. Raising foregone opportunity as a caution is OK with me because uncertainty does exist. Using it as a scare tactic is wrong because it presumes to know an outcome that is unknown. That said, my preference is to deal with it. And one of the best mechanisms for doing so that I know of would be to launch an official WDFW policy change to manage wild steelhead for MSR and deep six MSH. If such a test failed legally, then is the time to regroup and develop another alternative. Admitting defeat now is premature and serves to keep us boxed in the anachronistic thinking that harvestable wild steelhead actually occur in significant numbers in this state anymore. I wish they did, but the statistics tell a woefully different story.

I think MSR is but one of the future strategies that will be employed to maintain recreational fishing opportunity in Washington State. It will make a good fit with specific river plans to buy significant fractions of harvestable treaty steelhead shares and have them left in the river to enhance recreational fishing.

Grandpa,

In your previous post in this thread you used the phrase, “The forgone opportunity hammer the tribes hold . . .”. If I’ve read you correctly, you generally indicate your support for WSR conditioned upon its universal application to everyone, including the tribes. That ain’t gonna’ happen; therefore, I interpreted your meaning as being opposed to WSR under the conditions it could actually occur. If I misunderstood your support, and that your support for WSR is not conditioned on its application to tribes, then I’m wrong and I do apologize. I try to make as few assumptions as possible, especially incorrect assumptions.

Thank you for the compliment. I strive for accuracy even here, on a fishing BB.

CFM,

Happy New Year to you, you old codger! Hey, a certain river is dropping, dropping. Want to consider an outing in the next day or so? Call if you do.

How does it work that tribes harvest wild steelhead on rivers where you and I are prohibited? Well, several ways come to mind. First, if a river has a hatchery run, but there are no harvestable wild steelhead this year, the recreational fishery is restricted to WSR for conservation reasons. The tribe may harvest some early returning wild steelhead while targeting hatchery steelhead. That is permissible because the threshold bar for conservation is much higher for the state fishery than it is for treaty protected fisheries. That’s part of the life ain’t fair rule, but Boldt wrote that the state may regulate treaty fisheries for conservation to prevent a tribe from taking the “last spawning salmon.” Now, some tribal lawyers have interpreted that to mean that the state cannot close a tribal fishery if the population contains more than one male and one female salmon and steelhead. Of course, that is stupid, and the state has closed tribal fisheries above that level that were nonetheless in dire straits. But legally, well, we know that murderers are occasionally turned loose on a legal technicality. Part of the life ain’t fair rule.

Another thing that happens, is that harvestable numbers of hatchery and wild steelhead in a specific river system are aggregated. If there are 5,000 harvestable hatchery steelhead and 1,000 harvestable wild steelhead, that’s 6,000 total harvestable, with each fishery allocated 3,000 harvestable. So the side that fishes most in the late season usually ends up harvesting the higher number of wild fish. In years past, the Skagit worked this way, and the tribes focused their fishing in the early season, taking mostly hatchery fish and the sport fishery spread out from December thru March taking a smaller % of the hatchery fish but harvesting the preponderence of the wild fish. Now with more restrictions and few Indians fishing for steelhead, I’m not sure how it’s playing out.

Treaty tribes are generally represented by government or taxpayer provided attorneys, but some hire private attorneys with their own financial resources. I wouldn’t say they are the best attorneys money can buy, but they’re not bad. Big corporations and energy utilities have the best attorneys I’ve ever dealt with.

On the final note, I said I wasn’t qualified to explain. Need I say more about less?

Sincerely,

Salmo g.