Gary is not involved in the day to day operation of CCA. He has a business to run. Im happy to burst your bubble. So much for the know it alls.

It wasnt even two years ago, we all heard, ITS THE DAMS. So how is your battle going? Yet, some have time, to complain about people they dont even know, or work with. Some, keep repeating the same rule of 2% assuming the government and the fishing organizations cant reduce the limit of 2% to 1%. Its like car emissions. Reach the goal, raise the bar. They give no weight to the effect that selective harvest has already had on certain tribes. At the same time, acting like two different sets of rules would save any fish. If the commercial fisherman are given 50% of the allocation of hatchery fish, CCA will not fold up and go home. Its not an allocation fight. There are other fish and bottom dwellers to save. But, Im sure the detractors will continue to tell us, how and where CCA will fail. Doing nothing, is failure.

After two years, one of which was spent raising money to hire people to do our work, (which was also complained about)...and after WE saved the commission from one man rule of the entire dept. they are still complaining. Who gets the credit for getting rid of the former Director? Perhaps it came to the governor in a dream... CCA was another voice in DC to remove thousands of ghost nets from Puget Sound. OH! Big deal! Three volunteer members, represented sportsmen through the entire NoF process, all the way to the final meetings in California. Secured a humpy season on the Green River and increased the total amount of fishing season available by more than 10 months.

Rather than preaching about their own SOLUTIONS and PLANS, they continue to degrade some senior citizen, who broke with conventional wisdom and convinced the most successful marine conservation organization to work with US and on our behalf. They are doing everything wrong! Wah! The self proclaimed experts are still crying about not getting their way. They would also be wrong to assume that membership is of the opinion that selective harvest will completely solve the problem. Leadership has spoken of it, to the many members. There will be other battles. Listening to the detractors of the said organization, one might assume the organization is in a stiff legged march into battle with zero research, zero awareness, zero planning and zero credentials. Like its their first picnic. What the detractors fail to remember is the actual chances of banning commercial fishing out of the box, (2007) since it failed twice in the past. That might have been part of the problem, since so many experts said CCA would amount to nothing and FAIL. The possibility of ratcheting up the heat, if results do not improve, are not part of the collective thought process, only failure. No thought of the possibilities, only short comings.

I have to wonder, how a new business owner, active fisherman and officer of a nonprofit group, could delegated so much time, to ridicule membership and leadership of another organization. There is no election. Those who disagree, are free to organize and recruit their own members, raise money, elect officers, form a mission statement and position statements and go about hiring attorneys, lobbyists and various experts to draft legislation to ban nets on the Columbia River and everywhere else in the state.

Perhaps if we made the selective harrassment of wild spawning steelhead illegal in Washington rivers, year around, we might save one extra wild fish and some of you, would have time to ban the nets and tear down the dams. But, I suspect, some of you would rather pound the table harder, expecting different results. We will never know how many people will never join, how many ideas and volunteers will never come forth. Nor will we be able to predict how many problems wont be solved, because of the constant complaining and harrassment of members.