It's difficult to not get discouraged, Eric.

Apart from an abundance-based harvest framework predicated on pre-season run-size forecasts, almost everything we have brought to the table has been rejected.

We asked for a commitment to conduct in-season run-size updates, as well as in-season harvest estimates... for the purposes of making in-season reg changes in the event that preseason run-sizes and harvest models don't pan out as originally planned . VETOED on all three fronts.

We asked for annual limits on chinook to help limit the harvest and spread the available surpluses over more participants, more areas and longer seasons. VETOED on all three fronts.

We asked for net-free windows of 48 hours/week to give recreational users something to fish over on the weekends when recreational folks are most likely to participate. Instead we get a non-tribal gillnet opener of Thu Fri and Sat in the lower Chehalis to cleanse the river of any fish for the "weekend warriors."

We asked for regs to be more inclusive of all recreational users... the guys trolling in the bay, the mainstem Chehalis river rats, the guys drifting the tribs.... all participating in the bounty when times are good, as well as sharing equally in the conservation burden when runs are in the dumps. Basically, if there's enough fish to have any harvest, all users in the system should be given an opportunity in their favored geography. If there are enough fish for one group to harvest, there's enough for the other groups as well. It would just be a matter of adjusting seasons, daily limits and annual limits to achieve the ideal exploitation rate and still ensure enough fish hit the gravel. If not, then we forgo harvest altogether and just let any extra fish hit the gravel anyway. Heaven forbid anything that horrible (surplus fish hitting the gravel) happen under the watchful eyes of WDFW!

We asked for an earlier bank fishery at Morrison Park (single barbless, baitless, no chinook retention) for the guys without boats and the old guys who can't get around in the woods very well.... targeting huge surpluses of early-timed hatchery coho that show up virtually un-utilized at the Aberdeen Lake Hatchery. Verbal promises were made... but when push came to shove, VETOED!

Humptulips early-timed hatchery coho, same story... single barbless, baitless, release chinook.... a fishery targeting huge hatchey surpluses of coho. Promises were made at the meetings, but later shot down with the stroke of a pen. All too reminiscent of what happened at the South Bend meeting in 2005.

Need I go on?

OK... too damned bad, I'm on a roll....

We work for months on a collaborative Tier framework for executing our plans for more reponsible abundance-based harvest. After much wrangling and tweaking, we finally craft a document that everyone can live with. It is touted as the guiding document for all GH season-setting. HA! Right!? What a joke.

The 2007 regs violate at least five major provisions of the Tier document. Recreational start date for chinook, recreational start date for coho, allocating purposeful retention of gillnetted kings to NON-tribal comm-fishers, eliminating live-boxes, and liberalizing the 45 minute soak times.

And while the issue is NOT specifically discussed in the Tier document, WDFW is implementing unrealistic harvest models that clearly under-predict exploitation rates in every facet of the fishery... treaty, nontribal commercial, and sport. They come up with ridiculously low exploitation rates to habitually justify more days of killing on paper surpluses of fish that may never even materialize as the current salmon return unfolds this fall.

Bass turds... dirty bass turds!

OK, I'm done.... rant over... all better now!