Well guys the battle has started as you already know but it is just starting to heat up.After reading some Editorials on Initiative 696 I have come to the conclusion that the media by way of letters to the editor opinions ect.. will be one of the big factors in educating people on the facts. I have seen far more letters from supposedly educated people that are so full of bull I think its time we stepped in and all of us with a pen start flooding these papers with the facts. Here is an example of a letter from the manager of the Information and Education Services Division of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. As you can tell from the letter, us sport fishermen are all greedy and the nets have nothing to do with the decline of the salmon. Lets all write letters to the news papers with the facts and not let these half truths and out and out lies kill the initiative we have all worked so hard for.
Another thing we can do if one of you guys can organize it, is get a bunch of us to go down to one of the News Tribune's editorial board meetings that are held every week day at 10 a.m. and discuss the truth. here is the letter I read yesterday......Comments?
The E-mail address to reply to this and other anti 696 letters in the tribune is letters@mail.tribnet.com

I-696 isn't about conservation
ANTHONY MEYER; Olympia
Re: "Salmon initiative has loophole for tribes "(John Carlson column, 7-28).
While it is convenient to blame net fisheries for the decline of wild salmon stocks, such finger-pointing only serves to distract attention from the primary reason for their dwindling numbers: loss and degradation of suitable spawning and rearing habitat
Initiative 696 is about allocation, not conservation. The net-ban initiative would simply take away the non-Indian commercial fisherman's share of the salmon resource and give it to non-Indian sport fishermen.
Carlson is correct when he says that "scapegoating one group of fishermen while benefiting another won't conserve the salmon." Poor habitat looks the same to salmon whether they are from a run that is plentiful or one that is protected.
ANTHONY MEYER
Olympia
(Meyer is manager of the Information and Education Services Division of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.)
08/03/1999