Goinfishin,

I'm not ready to accept that commercial gillnetting where 2/3 of the catch is ESA listed salmon and steelhead is inevitable. This fishery is unjustifiable due to its impacts to bycatch. The targeted hatchery spring chinook are still available to other fisheries without the lower Columbia gillnet fleet. Most of the fish are bound upstream of Bonneville, where a treaty net fishery occurs, and beyond the point of migration for most of the intercepted steelhead. This is not an argument for the treaty gillnet fishery on those same fish, but an acknowledgement that it happens, and will continue to happen, anyway. The spring chinook bound for lower Columbia tributaries are available to recreational fishing in the Columbia and the respective tributaries.

The lower Columbia gillnet fishery is anachronistic, unnecesary to make biolgoical, economic, and social use of the chinook fishery public resource. If you've read my posts over the years, you'll know that I'm not opposed to commercial fishing; I'm not even opposed to gillnets. But I am opposed to stupid gillnet fisheries like this that are not biologically, economically, nor socially justifiable.

As fish advocates and conservationists, we owe it to ourselves and our children to continue to pressure the WDFW Commission to rescind this mistaken fishery.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.