I gotta tell ya, LB, I appreciate your tenacity...but I don't feel a need to offer "proof" of how they do it on the LCR...it's not even a fact in contention, it IS how they do it, and have always done it since the imposition of the ESA...and not only that, it's the ONLY way to do it in the presence of ESA fish that will be captured, whether they be by hook and line, purse seine, gillnet, or large teacup.

Mixed stock fisheries that capture ESA listed fish are ALWAYS limited by the amount of ESA fish that are killed. Those limits are set by the feds, the states craft fisheries to kill right up to that limit, and harvest as many hatchery fish as they can within those limits.

That's why you don't hear any of this "more fish spawning" fantasy coming from WDFW...they tell you straight up exactly what is happening...they are trying to lower the relative release mortality of the commercial fleet so that they will have access to more hatchery fish...while killing their share of the ESA impacts.

In a best case scenario, if this works out we stay at the 60/40 ESA impact allocation that the commercials and sporties have been working under, only the commercial guys harvest far more hatchery fish, downstream of us and before we get our shot.

This is a significant loss of sportfishing opportunity, with no benefit whatsoever to ESA spring Chinook...and that's the best case scenario.

Worse case scenario is that the commercials and their mouthpieces at ODFW and WDFW make the very same and very successful argument that we sporties have been making for several years...since we're more selective, we can harvest more hatchery fish within our share of the ESA impacts, we should get more of the allowable impacts.

If they make that argument, that's been very successful for us, then they'll likely get at least what they always ask for, which is a 50/50 split of the ESA limits...which would not only allow them to harvest even more hatchery fish below and before us, but we'd get a shorter season with smaller bag limits due to our smaller ESA impact allocation.

This is the least thought out, and most preposterous thing that any sportfishermen who cares about springer fishing on the entire Columbia River and its tribs could ever support.

Fish on...

Todd