salmon bake, you are the perfect example of why lots of very qualified advocates don't go anywhere near the CCA...and since you asked, I'll tell you what I've done for the LCR fishery, just one example.

I spent nine months traveling to Salem, Troutdale, and Olympia testifying at every meeting regarding the States' attempt to triple the allowable ESA impacts on wild steelhead in order to allow the commercial industry to increase their take of hatchery spring Chinook.

I wrote numerous papers for a few different groups...I represented six when I was at the last Troutdale meeting...I also participated with a few other groups in filing a 60 NOI if the States went forward with it, and helped gather several groups together who were going to sue the feds if they allowed it.

We were successful in stopping it from happening, and that not only preserved thousands of wild ESA steelhead from dying in the "tangle nets", it also preserved better fishing for us in both the LCR springer fishery, the LCR tribs fisheries for springers, and the steelhead fishing in the LCR, middle Columbia, upper Columbia, and all the tribs.

Somehow we managed it without the CCA, and there were many, many groups and advocates who participated in a very meaningful way in that successful campaign.

You think things are a mess as they stand now? You can't even imagine what it would be like if it weren't for the advocates and advocacy groups who have been fighting these battles for many decades.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about...guys who have never participated in these battles drop $25 and all of a sudden think they are experts, and that the CCA is the only thing going, and that no one has been doing anything until they dropped their check and "started" the fight.

The usual tactic of the CCA's internet ambassadors to attack the messenger, especially when they have no intellectual grasp of the message, is probably the single worse thing the CCA has going for it.

Fish on...

Todd