This is just my opinion and I am not taking sides, except against the non tribal gill netters. When I refer to nets, I am referring to what happens within our 50%.

I have spent a lot of time fishing in the Chehalis, and when there are no nets in the water the fishing has been good when there were willing biters swimming by. Okay, lets not use the word good in place of the word consistent. It has been consistent, meaning at certain stages of the tide when fish are more likely to bite, or just when willing biters encountered my offering, willing biters would bite. The key here was no nets. The bay fishery is happening and I noticed no difference.

Now fast forward to net days. The same exact area is basically a dead zone. Extremely few, if any, willing biters due to numerous factors. One is that they are being strip mined out in the nets, reducing the percentage of biters in the remaining fish that get by. Two, the boats are plowing back upstream to make another run, creating an enormous wake that muddies up the water 30 feet out from the bank and disturbing the travel path of the fish that were lucky enough to not get caught in the indiscriminate wall of death on the way down.

Lets be fair, the upstream fishery is maximally affected by gill netting and minimally affected by the bay fishery. On the days that I was out there in a boat, if there were fish being caught in the bay, there were usually fish being caught upriver, I have a reliable source as one of my immediate relatives is a fish checker with a cell phone.

I would really like to address a true downstream problem that is the wanton waste generated by the charter fleet, but that can be for another time.

The answer lies in the common denominator that is restricting our opportunity, the nets. We don't need to take from each other to make this situation better, we need to get the non tribal nets out. The tribes provide plenty of fish to the public. That argument is getting old and tired, but still gets brought up loud and clear in the NOF meetings when the commercials try to make the dept feel guilty like they're doing the public a disservice. At some point the state needs to quit propping up this obsolete industry and utilize sound fisheries management to manage our 50%. The enemy of the upriver fishing opportunity is the nets and nothing else.