The tribal card was inevitable. In the debate preceeding this decision I brought up the tribal issue as the trump card which would essentially negate all the feel good aspects of the moratorium. I pointed out , as I do now, that the tribes essentially run our fisheries and we are so afraid to go to court that we cave every time. We do for good reason as we lose in court every time. So many here on this BB would rationalize by saying that we, the sportsmen, need to set the example and that after we did that the tribes would be so embarassed that they would follow our lead.
WRONG....In fact, Ed, I think you espoused that line of thinking if I am not mistaken. Good wishful thinking but not sound if you take history into account.

The tribes have been increasing their access to all of our fisheries for over 20 years. Each year the take is greater and the arrogance is more widespread. I say arrogance because usually the tribes feel they always have vetop power and do not generally discuss matters like we do. They wait until the end and do what suits them which means we adjust our policies to suit them. This goes in spades for the crab fishing,too. A super dismal season for sports crabbers and a 24/7 bonanza for the tribes.

All one needs to do is try to document how many salmon, steelhead, crab, geoduck, sea urchins, deer , elk and every other marketable species the tribes harvest. Go ahead...get the information and post it here. WRONG. Ask WDFW for the information. They won't go near that issue. So the tribes see all of this way differently than the sports folks. To them a wild steelhead is big bucks. To you it is a beautiful thing in danger of extinction. So they will net every last one of them on every river with no regard to the extinction of the species.

So go ahead and do your feel good part and leave it at that. You did what you could do and that is all that counts. WE did the right thing. The problem is that the end game is not saving the steelhead. The end game is that some day the tribes will be the only ones fishing. You thought they were entitled to 50% of the harvestable fish, right? Well who says which ones are harvestable? NOT YOU...NOT WDFW...the tribes do.

What is the answer? Accountabilty is the answer. Not sure how to get there but it has to be figured out. That is where the debate needs to go in the future in my opinion. Oh and by the way don't even start with the racist crap because it has nothing to do with that. If a run is not harvestable then 50% of nothing should be nothing....It is not that way right now.