The Boldt decision clearly allows the tribes to use whatever gear they want to exercise their treaty rights, and allows them to sell their catch to whomever they want.

There are no restrictions whatsoever on those aspects of the treaty right.

As in every other factor involving the exercise of the treaty fishing right, changes have to come at the negotiations table.

If the tribes will agree to use fishing gear that allows them to release wild or ESA listed fish unharmed, they can utilize their allocation by harvesting more hatchery fish. They'll have to do it voluntarily, though.

It's most evident with fisheries like the Lower Columbia River spring Chinook fishery. With hundreds of thousands of hatchery spring chinook available for harvest, lots of them don't get harvested. Why? Because the limiting factor on how many they can catch is not the hatchery run size, but the ESA impact on the listed chinook and steelhead.

If commercials, tribal and non-tribal, use something more like a fish wheel, or fish trap, and reduce their ESA impact by, say, a third, they could harvest up to THREE times as many commercially valuable hatchery spring chinook.

If they utilized these gears and harvested DOUBLE the hatchery fish they do now, doubling their income from the fish, it would also leave lots more listed fish in the river. This in turn, would have two beneficial effects.

First, more listed fish make it to the spawning beds. The more listed fish in the river, the more hatchery fish that can be harvested without increasing the percentage ESA impacts. That means more $$ working right along side more wild fish spawning.

Second, sportfishermen, who already have very low ESA impacts, would also be able to fish for and harvest more hatchery fish.

For all three fishermen, they miss thousands upon thousands of hatchery fish to fish for because the seasons end long before the hatchery run is even moderately utilized. More selective fisheries that have higher listed fish survival rates are good for all the fishermen, and the fish, and the economics of the fisheries.

Changes in treaty fishing need to be encouraged by changes in non-treaty fishing. We can't make sportfishermen any more selective, we already release all the wild ones with a pretty low mortality rate.

Non-treaty commercial fishermen can be made to change their gear types, if the legislature and harvest managers will hold their feet to the fire.

If the non-tribal commercials improve their gear types to have lower mortalities, then they will get a bigger share of the hatchery fish without needing a higher ESA impact.

When they start making more $$ and getting a higher amount of hatchery fish, the tribes will fall in line so they can get the same advantages.

That's my solution for modifying treaty fishing over listed, mix-stock fisheries.

On non-listed fisheries, like on the OP, anything we ask them to stop doing, we're going to have to offer them something else of corresponding value.

Anyone who has read any of the science available knows that wild fish are the future of healthy fisheries. The hatcheries just aren't going to keep the wild fish at any level.

Before the anti-WSR guys get too excited, this is in no way a call to get rid of hatcheries. Without hatcheries we don't have fish to harvest, and there is nothing to trade to the treaty tribes to get them to stop fishing for the wild ones.

If the tribes fish in a way that allows them to release, say, 500 wild fish they would have ordinarily harvested, I say give them 500 more of the hatchery fish.

They get the same amount of fish, and the same amount of money. More wild fish spawn, and their higher productivity creates many more fish than the 500 hatchery fish could have.

We harvest hatchery fish in Nov. through February, or later if any are still around, and exercise WSR over much higher runs of wild fish.

We get fish for the BBQ, more fish to fish for throughout the season, spend more $$ in small towns that really need it, not to mention all the $$ we spend on everything else to go fishing over a year.

I think it's also important to point out, again, that WDFW CAN NOT make the tribes do anything. People keep claiming that if WDFW just had enough balls they'd go after the tribes, etc., etc. They don't tell the tribes what to do, and they cannot.

Fish on...

Todd