Friends,

The true beauty of a viscerally formed and held opinion is that it remains unchanged by any amount of factual information. By comparison, rational opinions are incredibly boring, since they’re based only on facts and estimates of facts. The visceral opinions expressed on this board are highly entertaining, but unfortunately they don’t teach us anything useful. But venting and ranting makes me feel better sometimes, too. So here’s mine. I must say that it disturbs me how adept some of my fellow anglers are at spouting off with all the intelligence of a box of rocks. Yeah, I know there’s no IQ requirement for obtaining a fishing license, and I’m not suggesting that there be one. Just that it irks me how that 80% majority of fishermen are giving the remaining 20% a bad image. But if you try replacing some of your visceral opinions with rational ones, the world might just make a little more sense to you, hopefully without depriving us of all entertainment value.

This post may seem pro treaty fishing to some of you, but I’m really only trying to describe facts as I understand them. If flaming makes you feel better, go for it. But in fact, I’m just an angler who is pro fish, pro common sense, and pro law, in that particular order.

History lesson: The U.S. government made treaties with Indian tribes because 1) they acknowledged tribes as the rightful owners of the land and resources they occupied and utilized; 2) treaties were perceived by the government as the more upright way to deal with Indians; 3) the government perceived treaties as a less costly way of obtaining land from Indians than the alternative costs in lives and resources by way of making war. The government may have been right or may have been wrong, but that’s how they felt at the time. Treaties are the supreme law of the land; it’s in the constitution, and it’s well established in case law by the U.S. Supreme Court. You aren’t required to like it, but it might help if you understood it. The Supreme Court has been upholding treaties since at least 1906, including treaty fishing rights. The court upholds them, not due to liberal judges and lawyers, but because that is the law, yet some of us seem amazingly immune to understanding that.

Treaty tribes have a right to fish. You and I have a privilege, not a right. That’s in the Supreme Court decisions too. So when you talk about your or our fishing rights, you ain’t talking about much. Sorry. I don’t like that much, either, but that, my friend, is how it is. The tribes’ fishing rights are the supreme law of the land. If they waste the fish they catch, sell them, take them home to their families and eat them, it’s all OK and covered by their rights under law. Just as the tribes have no business telling the state how to manage the non-treaty share of the resource, the state has no business telling the tribes what to do with theirs or how to manage it. While using native steelhead for halibut bait is repulsive to most of us, that is certainly within a tribe’s treaty fishing right, so long as the steelhead was legally harvested and accounted for.

BTW, you and I may think we hold certain high moral ground on some of these issues, but please understand that most of these are simply relative values. There is nothing intrinsically superior to using herring instead of steelhead for bait. At least not in a biological or ecological sense. That is a matter of human value. And that value is likely to be different for a recreational steelhead angler than it is for a commercial halibut fisherman. Some anglers think it’s a crime against nature for a native steelhead to be caught in a treaty gillnet. Yet, those same anglers don’t think twice about whacking a similar native steelhead caught on their hook and line. Of course, neither of those steelhead will survive to spawn, so aside from different human values, what’s the difference?

A few other items worth noting. Indians fished for subsistence and commercial purposes. Coastal tribes traded dried and smoked fish to interior tribes, and sold fish to whites at the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition, if not before. That meets every technical definition of commerce. Just as the treaties did not prohibit white citizens from employing new technology (monofiliment, aluminum boats, etc.), the treaties did not, and could not, prevent the Indians from adopting new technology either. I just can’t fathom where some you get off thinking that treaties must limit tribes to using old style traps, spears, small nets, etc. Where do you get that information? The rocks in your head? Sorry, that’s flaming at no one in particular on my part. It’s not necessary to make up such ideas; the facts are readily available, but they’re probably of no interest to those who cannot be bothered by or influenced with facts. Here’s another that just might ruin your day: the courts found no instance where tribal fishing ever destroyed a salmon or steelhead run. They did not find the same for you and me, fellow citizens. Now don’t get me wrong; I do believe that tribal fishing has adversely affected some fish runs, but when it comes to outright destruction, none of the tribes even comes close to us. Makes ya’ think the fish need a lot more friends like us, huh? I mention this in the remote hope that some of you will think first before putting your mouth, er keyboard, in gear sometimes. Bashing treaty fishing might be fun, but it doesn’t make the basher appear very intelligent to an informed audience. Another item: no amount of state legislation will affect treaty fishing in the slightest. Treaty Indian fishing is a matter of federal law. A bill from the state legislature with 100% unanimous approval doesn’t mean didly. You history buffs might like to know that the Washington State Supreme Court did rule against Indian fishing in a 1976 case. Guess what? Right on, no effect, because it was superceded by federal court decisions. State fishing laws have no meaning in regards to treaty fishing rights.

I said that I’m pro fish. And I understand that fish don’t need me to survive, even though I release wild fish, pinch my barbs down, and so on. Sticking a hook in a fish’s jaw and making it run and jump just to entertain myself hardly makes me a fish’s best friend. (Although I’ve got a spiel that I think is rational for that, but another time.) However, fish do need advocates. Effective advocates. There have been appeals here and elsewhere that we need to organize and do one or another good thing for the fish resource. Yet these attempts frequently do not succeed. Why? Ya’ ain’t gonna’ like this, but I believe it is because when we try to promote our cause, as a group, we fishermen don’t present a rational or very intelligent image to the overall public. We rant, we rave, and point fingers everywhere but at ourselves. Hardly credible in my opinion. For instance, I696 was mentioned. Why did it fail? In addition to commercial spending in opposition I believe it failed because the voting public could see plain as day that it wasn’t really a conservation initiative. It was designed to transfer a significant commercial catch into the recreational catch but was veiled as a conservation measure. Hence my subject line: let’s call this spade a shovel.

End of rant.