In Hood Canal the deceit of the Skoks is legendary according to those in the know inside the WDFW and among knowledgeable folks in different organizations. No one wants to try to take on the tribes and no one has found a way to hold them accountable as they trot out their sovereign nation protective shield whenever the need arises. Their "season" for crabbing is a far cry from the 6 days I mentioned earlier. The 6 days I mentioned were the days directly preceeding the sports pots going in. My point was that they took what was supposed to be the canalwide quota in those 6 days as if the rest of the year didn't count. Like right now for example. Tribal pots line Puget Sound. 24/7. And the number of pots "allowed" is 100 per boat. That does not mean that every boat deploys 100 pots but they will if they can. Some of the buoys you see on the surface are attached to multiple pots . In fact, in area 7, the tribes for the first time ever made a deal with the non-tribal commercials to limit their mutual pot count to only 50 per boat. This was implemented at the beginning of their "season" which just got started a month or so after the sports season was closed on an emergency basis because we got our "quota". After a week or so the tribes panicked saying they were not taking enough crab so they **** canned the agreement they had made and went back to fishing with 100 pots per boat. I got an on-the-water report when the season opened from a friend who was on a ferry bound for Friday Harbor in the San Juans...he said the ferry actually had to stop because there were so many crab pots in the water it partially blocked navigation. The Coast Guard most likely told them to call the tribal enforcement folks as the US has no jurisdiction over the indian "nations" becuase they are sovereign governments. If they had made that call I bet they got no answer.

The tribes actually threatened to shut down all sports crabbing because they allege that we cannot accurately count our catch. That's right. They would go to federal court and say they were not being given their court ordered 50%. Well we can't claim accuracy yet. We do have the CRC (catch record card) but it will not be of much use until it is totally implemented in 2005. All we have is the phone survey method of counting sports catch. Most of the money collected by the additional $3.00 fee tacked on to your license for the crab CRC went to the company hired to do this fflawed phone survey.Then the CRC results will not be tallied until the end of the season. The notion that the tribes are really accurate in reporting is just plain ridiculous. They sell to tribal buyers who most often do not report in the 24 hour window allowed the non-indian commercials but most often take 2-3 months to do so and then the data is under reported by all accounts.

Think about it for a second. When we come to the ramps with our boats we are greeted by a WDFW fish checker. The commercial boats are not. Here's an example: This spring I went fishing out of Cathlamet on the Columbia River. When we came back to the dock the fish checker was checking every boat. On the dock right next to ours were all the gill netters. One guy had his pickup backed down the ramp and was loading Chinook into a tote in the back of the pick up from the boat. No one was checking his dock at all. Only sports fishermen get checked. Why isn;t a checker deployed to count the commercial catch? Now I know there is a modest effort to enforce commercial fishing but is there any effort to police crabbing? I think not. This is a big enough deal to warrant some accountability. Sports needs to be accountable as do the commercials including the "untouchable " tribes. They won't allow scrutiny because their hands are real dirty. They don't want fin clipping as mandated because that means accountability. They don't want fin clipping because they think that would allow "us" to catch some of "their" fish.

We are looking at many proposals to solve this problem. The CRC is one solution. We are thinking that fish checkers who already are deployed all season at the docks could collect data on crabs and shrimp and not just fish. There is also substantial discussion about the overall health of the crab population in Puget ?Sound. It may just be that there are far less crab out there than we think. If that is the case we will all need to sacrifice even more than we already have. The big question is whether the tribes can be forced to sacrifice? They certainly have not shown a willingness to compromise or get along yet. I would love to see a day when I can stop criticizing the tribes and sit down with them to solve our problem on an equal basis. As long as they head down the road they are on I don't see that happening for some time. I really hope I am wrong.