This may be hard to swallow, but give it a chance to sink in...

You know what it's like when you are heading out to the river in the morning...it's dark, your gear is all in order from the night before, you have no idea if it will be a good day, but hey! you're a fisherman!...of course you're filled with optomism!

You put the boat in...some birds fly by as the fog lifts just enough in the early light to see where you're rowing...you take your first cast of the morning, and it hits the water with a barely audible *plop!*...and you just flat out *know* you are going to have a great day!!

Think about that feeling that we all have...

The tribal fishers, and the non-tribal commercial fishers, too, for that matter...as they are playing out their nets and watching the corks float along the water...

They feel exactly the same way.

They enjoy what they do exactly the same way we enjoy what we do...that's why they do it...no more, and no less. You can call it "greed" all you want, but no one in Washington makes jack for money commercial fishing in rivers...at best it barely covers costs...which, frankly, is better pay than most of us get for it.

Fish on...

Todd