Castnblast,

In some cases the treaty tribes take more than 50% of the harvest, and sometimes they don't. The Muckleshoot case on the Duwamish/Green might be a case where they do, but I'm not going to look it up. Here's why: as Todd mentioned, the non-treaty sport fishery cannot fully harvest the non-treaty share of terminal area salmon partly because the fish are poor biters compared to when they are feeding in the salt water. In order for non-treaty fishermen to fully harvest the non-treaty share in such cases, the only viable alternative is to open a non-treaty commercial net fishery, which used to be common. So in either case, those salmon not caught be non-treaty sport anglers aren't going to end up in the sport catch. They're gonna' end up in the commercial catch. This ends up mattering mainly to folks like Woolly, who is fixated on the equality issue. Equality of harvest can be achieved, but it's more likely to result in even fewer terminal area coho being available to sport fishermen, as the non-treaty gillnet fishery has plenty of fishing power to scoop up all surplus coho. As sport anglers, we're better off with the situation as it is.

Regarding fish waste, it happens. It happens in both treaty and non-treaty fisheries. I don't have enough information to point fingers, but I think that it occurs more in the treaty fishery. I think that because tribes fish in terminal areas where they are more likely to catch salmon in poor condition that commercial buyers don't want. Having seen some examples, that's my conjecture about the overall situation of wastage.

Regarding emergency closures, they are common to commercial fishing. You may not be familiar with them because you don't commercially fish; otherwise you most likely would. A long time ago I worked in salmon harvest management and also saw tribal fisheries subjected to emergency closures with some regularity.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.