David,

I am all for chartered anglers to get 2 Halibut. I work for a charter operator part time. The Issue is what the state of Alaska and it's citizens want and what the Fed's want. At this point I think the Feds have done a good job of managing halibut that has kept them at sustainable levels. Where I think this whole situation has gotton out of hand is when NMFS and the State of Alaska failed to rein in the huge increases in charter boats especially in 2C. IFQ had already gone through and they didn't figure in the consequences of a growing charter fleet that would eventually go over there GHL. The only solution I see is for charters to buy IFQ. As far as I know there is no way for the feds to take commercial IFQ and give it to sport fishers without some form of payback to the longliners. Unfortunatly we can't go back and fix what wrongs may have been done. Here are bumper stickers going around SE Alaska that spells out the fight for the resource and how the commercial and local population feel about the charter fleet.