I'll be at the Aberdeen meeting. How about some of the other regulars?

Spawnout, Dan S, Local, Drifter WA, fp?

I have some issues I would like to raise with Mr Koenings and his staff:

1) Maximum recreational/harvest opportunity on abundant hatchery stocks, including emergency openers for clip-fin only retention when an obvious surplus is returning to Grays Harbor streams. This year is a perfect example.

2) Mass-marking of all hatchery chinook released into Grays Harbor. This would allow a mark-selective chinook fishery for maximum recreational/harvest opportunity on abundant hatchery stocks while protecting Upper Chehalis wild stock (which supposedly has failed to meet escapement goals the past few years). That would have made last year's chinook closure completely unnecessary.

For all the naysayers out there, I ask but one question.
What are these hatchery fish being produced for if not maximum harvest opportunity?

If we as sportsmen pay big $$$ to artificially propagate these critters, we ought to be given the benefit of catching them. Otherwise, we should just quit raising them, or start raising something else with those $$$ that actually benefits the recreatinal angler.

If Mr Koenings cites lack of funding as the stumbling block for mass marking GH chinook, I'm sure local fishing clubs/volunteers could be counted upon to clip those fish. Another alternative for fin-clipping manpower would be to put some of those parastic inmates at Stafford Creek to better use.