Just got off the phone with Chad Jackson, a biologist with region 4. He said that the accidental closure yesterday was partly his fault. He has sent a proposal to Olympia which will be signed today to close all Puget Sound stream terminal areas beginning wed. Jan. 21st. He assured me that this will happen next week. The confusion was that the proposal got cc'd to the WDFW officers and they thought it was a directive to shut down those areas on this wed. Jan. 14th! He stated that all areas have had the signs removed and will be open thru tuesday evening.

He also stated that the reason for the closure has nothing to do with the number of fish in the snohomish system. As a matter of fact the snohomish system already has enough fish for their eggtake. However, the puyallup, skagit, and green rivers are way behind and the snohomish system fish will be necessary to supplement them. He stated that as of Sunday the needed a combination of 300 hens from all these systems to obtain their total eggtake goal of approx. 1.1 million eggs. He also said that if this number was obtained before the end of feb. the fishing would reopen through the end of the month.

If any of you actually believe that once they shut us down they will reopen it I have some oceanfront property in Kansas I would like to sell you!!! I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt it! I know many of you don't like to fish these terminal areas anyway, but there are alot of people that do. Taking away opportunity is always a bad thing...especially when we are finally having a decent run of winter fish. I'm not sure if we can do anything about this or not, but I would encourage all to call the region 4 office and the headquarters down in olympia and express your feelings over this lost opportunity whether you fish these areas or not. We need to make stands on issues that effect the fishing community together whether they directly effect us or not...or we will never get anywhere!

Good luck,
Canyon Man