Jerry,

That's a reasonable question. BPA spends millions of dollars on habitat improvement other than the most glaring habitat problem, which is the string of 8 federal dams on the lower Snake and lower Columbia Rivers. Admittedly they are spending money there too, but it's at window dressing levels for experimental or pilot projects to try to improve fish passage. They are having some limited success. Overall it doesn't matter how many millions of dollars are spent if the money and effort doesn't address the root cause of the declining fish populations. The root cause is ineffective downstream juvenile fish passage due to slackwater reservoirs, increased water temperatures, increased predation, and injury and mortality from passing through hydro turbines. Fix those and salmon and steelhead populations would rebound up to present habitat productivity and capacity unless harvest rates were preventing them at that level.

BTW, a fishwheel was installed and operated on the Skagit a few years ago. Unfortunately it didn't work out very well. Fish wheels work best when daily flow fluctuations from warming and cooling are minimal. Add hydro fluctuations and it becomes nearly impossible. Also, fish wheels need turbid water. I thought the Skagit was dirty enough in the spring and summer, but apparently fish see pretty well. Really dirty rivers like the Susitna are better for fish wheels.

Traps are good. Expensive, but effective. Contrasted with gillnetting, which is very cheap, and you can see why the commercial fishery prefers nets.

Your key point about having habitat without fish to fill it continues to ignore that on your subject river, the Green, escapement goals for chinook and wild steelhead are routinely met. Please explain what the benefits of more fish reaching the spawning grounds would achieve in terms of river basin productivity, capacity, diversity, abundance, spatial structure or any other parameter that measures a salmonid population's status. The only parameter I can think of that would be improved by prohibiting all net fishing is that more fish would be in the river and available to be caught by sport fishing. That is not a productivity issue. That is an allocation issue. That is a gillnetting versus sport fishing issue, and has nothing to do with the health of a fish population.

Fishpolelease,

I don't think you're stupid. I haven't joined CCA yet either. I might; I'm a member of fly fishing clubs and conservation organizations. I can spare $25 when I get the feeling that CCA will be more than a flash in the pan. I don't know, but simply hope that CCA is holding its cards close to the vest so as not to tip its hand. When I get wind that a viable strategy is brewing, I'm in.

FNP,

Here, here! The 4 Hs are really 2, and then there's the third H, History from which we as a society refuse to learn. And then within our fishing community we can't seem to resist painting over everything with either the broad brush of all Harvest or all Habitat. And like it or not, there isn't and never again will be enough fish to go around. Society (thru our WDFW Commission or more likely thru the voter Initiative process) needs to make the tough choices about how to allocate scarce fishery resources today and into the future.

Sg