YOU are getting screwed and you don't even know it yet! Please read the new Cowlitz River Fisheries and Hatchery Management plan (FHMP)
http://www.ci.tacoma.wa.us/Power/parks/cowlitz/relicensing/FHMP_Draft_1_05_%202004.pdf

If this board wants to see how a laymen like me, can go head to head with professional bureaucrats who chose to defend this screwed up Plan, this may be one of the best threads this board has ever seen!

Do you like to bring a fish home for dinner once in a while? Do you like to catch steelhead in October through February, or catch hatchery sea run cutthroat on the Cowlitz? Do you like to take a hatchery fish home once and a while, maybe to eat, i.e. coho, steelhead, or a cutthroat?

Do you like to catch lots of "hatchery" fish, like the big runs of coho, that the Cowlitz has always experienced? Do you want to continue to catch early winter run hatchery steelhead on the Cowlitz? Do you want special environment interest groups like American Rivers (AR) or Yakama National or other special interest groups like Trout Unlimited (TU) setting the goals, the productions rates, and species of fish that you enjoying catching on the Cowlitz River?

Do you want a tribe, like the Yakama's, Who have NO LEGAL fishing rights on the Cowlitz to have special powers in setting policy on how you harvest or manage the fishery on the Cowlitz? Do you want the Yakama's, TU, or AR making the recommendation that will limit the production standards and numbers fish that you may be allowed to catch or harvest in the future on the Cowlitz?

Well if you do, then please don't read what is about to happen to the future sport fishing in the Cowlitz River under the new Draft Cowlitz Fisheries Hatchery Management Plan (FHMP)!

The Plan, as written, will mean dooms day to our sporting fishing on the Cowlitz. The Plan was developed and crafted by Tacoma, to save them millions of dollars each year in mitigation coasts. Tacoma and a few others are attempting to turn the Cowlitz into a "wild fish" river over the next several years. I expect that this issue will develop a few serious debates on how this plans fails to meets Tacoma's mitigation responsibilities for damages that their project has done, and continue to do, to the Cowlitz. I know that Salmo G will most likely defend Tacoma's position that Tacoma is mitigating all that they must do under the Federal Power Act. Other State agencies may jump in, under the cover of there board names to defend how screwed up the FHMP is.

When its all said and done, you will all be able to see for yourselves if I am right about what the new FHMP will do to the Cowlitz fishery. Either way, if you think that you will be able to continue to fish and have "catchable" runs of fish in the Cowlitz in the future for both your and your kids ….. It's time to wake up and smell the roses!

If you enjoy fishing on the Cowlitz and, and yes, harvesting a fish or two, you owe it to your self to read the newly released draft FHMP for the Cowlitz. It's over 175 pages long, but you can just go to the specie that you like to fish, to see just how screwed up the Plan is! After reading it, I will be more then happy to try answering your question! I my reading it as I write, so it may take some time to get back to each of your concerns or questions.

Tacoma and a few others have now created a plan to phase out most of the hatchery production in the Cowlitz in lieu of believing that "wild fish" will be able to produce Tacoma's mitigation responsibilities.

The joke is on us. . . and we don't even know it yet!

Please read it closely, because you are getting screwed big time, as sport fishermen!


Cowlitzfisherman