What do we want Region 6 to hear? How's this for starters...

1) Let's be intellectually honest about our harvest models. They've been low-balling the true fishing power of the fleets, both rec and commercial, particularly for chinook. At low abundance returns, the rec fleet has a priority allocation. By being honest about how many fish it really takes to fuel the rec fishery, it leaves us with a more realistic figure of how many fish are actually available to fuel any gillnet days.

2) Let's be intellectually honest about the mixing of stocks in the marine area. The model counts nearly 1/2 the kings in the bay as Humptulips stock, effectively diluting the true impact on Chehalis stock. On paper this permits many more fishing days to be added to the season.

3) Let's be intellectually honest about chum. The other species of fall salmon are segregated into Hump stock and Chehalis stock. Why are chums treated with a double standard? Because lumping them together in aggregate allows more fishing days to occur.

Bottom line, let's stop spending phantom fish that don't exist. While it all may work out on paper, there is no buffer to protect against models that don't pan out in real life. The escapement shortfalls are no where to be seen on paper in the final NOF documents, but year after year, they are certainly evident on the gravel.