WN1A, I'm hereby declaring you an honorary "Dismal Scientist" of the first order! That second idea you outlined makes great sense to me, both economic and conservation-wise. I am going to have to think out a good letter to write to Senator Hatfield...don't know exactly what I'm going to say, yet. But your idea in your last post is something that he should be aware of as a way to keep these commercial fishers fishing without the bycatch related damage to wild stocks.

Myself, I am a sport fisher who happens to have a few commercial fishers as friends, and a whole lot more as neighbors. Commercial fishers have solidarity and motivation, and they are way better organized than us sport fishers.
I'm pretty new to this, but I can see that sport fishers as a whole have yet to get anywhere near being as motivated or organized; we are going to have to get over our differences (fly fisher vs. gearhead, kill & grill vs C&R, etc).

I have been trying to educate myself on all of this, trying to separate the emotional rants from the well thought out ideas. It's not an easy task, but thanks to all those who have seriously contributed their thoughts and ideas here.