Actually, it wasn't lawyers or judges that got us into this mess...it was sportfishermen, first, who created the mess with the Puyallup and Nisqually Tribes and their steelhead fishery (which was taking something like 7% of the fish runs at the time)...which lead to Slade Gorton taking the lead, both as the State's mouthpiece, on the front side, and as a commercial fishing money pot, on the back.

Under Slade's sage leadership, we eventually got slapped down hard two dozen times, after the State utterly refused to acknowledge the first several attempts to get them to back off...and the final result of that was...

The Boldt Decision.

Racist sporties, overzealous politicos with their hands in the cookie jar, and ignoring court decisions...that's what got us to 1974...after that it's just been a gigantic clusterf%*k trying to keep our heads above water enough to not drown.

Fish on...

Todd