Thanks Fishpinner for offering your thoughts.

Do you understand the layers of CR fish management as well as you do the Civil War?

'Cause if you do, you already know that the total allowed ESA impacts allowed on spring chinook is ~14% (it can vary). And you'd know that is split with 12% going to the Treaty Tribes (eighty-six percent of the total impacts). And 2% going to commercial gillnetters, and anglers below AND ABOVE Bonneville.

That 2% sliver is what all the battles have been about in Salem and Olympia and here and on IFISH. How to divide that itty bitty sliver of impacts between sports and commercial gillnetters.

That split of impacts has come down to roughly a 60/40 division. So, we get 1.2% ESA impacts to fish on and the gillnetters get .8% to conduct mainstem and SAFE area commercial fisheries.

If CCA completely eliminated gillnetting springers, and ALL OF THE GILLNETTERS' .8 ESA IMPACT SHARE WAS RESERVED FOR CONSERVATION, do you really think that would restore wild spring chinook?

No it wouldn't. It can't. The math doesn't lie.

And the "reserving" of those .8 ESA impacts isn't even in the initiative's language. That scenario is wishful thinking.

There is lots of good reasons to get rid of the gillnets. Along with solid policy grounds to not keep the commercials on the lower 110 miles of the Columbia River.

Those battles in Olympia and Salem were, are, and will continue to be about the inequity of a heavily subsidized handful of gillnetters getting too many fish.

This CCA Oregon initiative doesn't change that.

What it does:

1. Likely has no meaningful conservation impact for ESA spring chinook.

2. Moves more of the total harvest of hatchery fish to the commercial side of the plate.

3. Shifts more angler dollars (those current $2 surcharges) from pro-fishing projects to subsidizing the gillnetters even more.

Going back to the military analogy - understand just what the hell it is you're fighting for.