Chris,
The last couple of years have been banner years for Neah Bay halibut fishing. We had a couple of quotas that were enlarged due to more halibut. Looks like that will get cut back to the normal amounts from previous years. I did say that the fish were bigger at the Hot Spot. My biggest point I would like to make is why does Pete and other charters want the straights closed now? Wouldn’t this make sense to open this up and make another fishery? This would definitely take the pressure off of Neah Bay. Times have changed and now we should look this differently. The massive fishing pressure could be relaxed with fishing for halibut in Feb-April in areas 5-7. Would you back this? As far as keeping us fishing when the Yelloweye became an issue, that was the work of Tom Young, Mike Gilchrist, and Phil Leschowitz of Recreational fishing Alliance. These guys went to work to get the different closure area where most of the Yelloweye concentrations were the most and got a kill quota. Although we couldn’t keep the Yelloweye, without this quota all bottomfishing would have been finished.