Doc,

I think it's pretty clear why, there are three reasons.

1. Harvest mentality.
2. Harvest mentality.
3. Harvest mentality.

There might be a few more, but they'll all be different variations on the first three.

The most time spent by both the feds and the state regarding recovery of depressed runs always comes with how to selectively fish around them while having harvest fisheries.

For a really obvious example, just look to the Columbia River. If memory serves me correctly, a couple of years ago the allowable impact of a commercial fishery on endangered Redfish Lake Sockeye was FIVE fish. And they had a commercial fishery, with a buffer of FIVE fish. Not 5000, not 500.

FIVE.

Why? Because of all the hatchery fish there that are there to be harvested, must be harvested, and will be harvested, endangered sockeye, steelhead, and spring chinook be damned.

And I'm not just blaming this on the WDFW/Commerical Fishing Lobby relationship, the Feds are right in step, until they are sued by conservation groups forcing them to list fish that ought to have been protected long before, and should have been listed long before.

Why weren't they protected or listed? The protections, and the ESA, get in the way of all the fish that MUST be harvested.

Anyone know the name of the plan to recover listed chinook salmon in Puget Sound?

"Fishing our way to Recovery"

Now...there are ways to selectively fish around depressed fish. And no user group is better at it than sportfishermen. What with proper gear use (often required, and often used even not when required) and proper catch and release techniques (sometimes required, sometimes based on education), not to mention closures that suspend or end fishing in some places at some times.

Until the commercial industry starts using selective fishing techniques (NOT coho nets to selectively catch hatchery springers while catching and releasing 2/3 of the fish that swim into the nets, 1/3 of which are steelhead, steelhead that are the size of fish that are MEANT to be gilled by coho nets, not tangled), they have no business fishing over those Col. R. runs.

Using a net that catches two listed wild fish for every target hatchery fish, and that net is designed to catch and kill half of those listed fish, is not selective fishing.

Who will make it so? I'll be a bit cynical for a second, but I don't think that the commercial industry will adopt a more selective technique on their own.

The obvious answer is that WDFW must make them do it. Why don't they? I'll be cynical again, but I'd refer to reasons 1 thru 3 above for the answer.

Here will be the only way to prove me wrong that is available to WDFW right now. If NOAA Fisheries comes back and approves a 7% impact on listed ESA steelhead during the next two years' spring chinook fisheries, it will be up to WDFW to create a season doing so, and up to the WDFW Commission to approve it.

If WDFW is really serious about fish recovery, beyond lip service and continued restriction of sport opportunities, then they will not even ask the Commission to approve such an obviously irresponsible harvest mentality. And if they do ask, the Commission needs to say "NO".

Will NOAA Fisheries reopen the BiOp, study it, and approve a 7% allowable impact? I sure hope not...and they will receive a ton of science outlining the reasons why they shouldn't, from many, many different sources.

If they do approve it, and any legal challenges are unsuccessful, in spite of all the warm fuzzy feelings I have about it, I doubt WDFW would wait more than, oh, four minutes before going to the Commission and asking for it.

I hope the Commission will step up...I actually do have a lot of faith in them.

Doc, I guess that was a really long-winded effort at answering your question, and one that used a different context completely than the original situation, but it applies just as well.

Mining wild eggs, that are much more valuable and productive in the river rather than in the broodstock ponds, is done to create more and bigger hatchery fish for harvest.

That's not to say that all broodstock programs are bad, just that they need to be gone into with goals that can be measured, and use wild fish that the wild run can afford.

It's a balancing act, one that the benefits must outweigh the detriments. If two wild fish can produce six wild adults, and two fish in a broodstock program can produce four hatchery fish, that clearly is not right. If it can produce ten fish, and ten less fish are produced in response from a "regular" hatchery, then perhaps it is right.

The age of factory hatcheries attempting to live with wild fish is over...and everyone knows it. We either live without factory hatcheries, or we live without wild fish.

If my typing fingers had a throat, they'd be losing their voice by now. Sorry for the long winded rant.

Fish on...

Todd.