And therein lies the rub...making the non-treaty commercials be "more selective" doesn't help fishing or fish...yet some are sure spending an awful lot of time pushing it anyway, and claiming otherwise.

No one, and I mean NO ONE will be able to tell the tribes to do anything that they don't want to do, beyond making sure they stay within their allowable ESA impacts, including them reducing our take of hatchery fish to make sure that the ratio of hatchery/wild fish that make it above Bonneville is sufficient for them to harvest the same amount of hatchery fish as the combined total for the non-treaty fishers (us and the commercial guys).

For some inexplicable reason some folks are reading what Francis wrote as a good reason for purse seine fishing, when it is in fact exactly what I and others have been telling you for a year now...it's an utter waste of time and resources to "win" something that produces no winning whatsoever for the fish or the fishing, outside of reducing incidental impacts to steelhead, and perhaps some sturgeon.

As I've said all along, and will continue to say...if the pushers of this selective drug would just come out and say "we realize this won't help springer fishing or do jackshit for ESA springers, but it will help a few thousand wild steelhead and maybe some sturgeon", then at least they'd be telling the truth and we could haggle about the efficacy of doing it...but instead they rely on a complete upside down interpretation of the facts, and somehow find an opportunity for ESA recovery AND better sportfishing, contrary to any reasonable interpretation of the facts at all.

It's just an impossibility, both on paper and in the river.

Point that out to the zealots, and rather than be engaged in any sort of useful conversation utilizing facts and logic, they fall back to "the CCA is so great" and "you must love gillnets!"...and falling back on those arguments is the surest sign that they do not have one fuckin clue what they are talking about.

Have a banquet, pat yourself on the back for the good eats and the auction that is used to fund the next auction, and watch the big Columbia River experiment blow up in your face when all the believers are finally forced to see that it is a complete waste of their time and money to support something that is at best negligible for the fish, and will severely curtail sportfishing...at best.

At worst, it will be worse for both the fish and the fishing.

If you really give a rat's ass about Columbia River fish and fisheries, put your time into the two things that will actually make a difference...getting the non-treaty commercial fishers completely off the river...completely gone, forever...and put the money and energy into habitat issues (which include dam operations).

That will put more wild fish on the spawning grounds, and make fishing better...the stated goals of the "selective" experiment, that the experiment will not even remotely further.

Fish on...

Todd