Everything that walks, floats, obstructs, strains water, spits, pisses, craps, or throws gear into our oceans and river systems has some sort of negative impact on our worlds andronomous fish runs. Being sportsmen we have certain bias and opinions on the matter. We blame freely what is most evident to our personal view. In most cases we tend to blame the damming of our streams, tribal netting, non-tribal netting,logging etc.. Each one individually has it's fatal consequenses in relation to what most on this site hold very precious...our fish and our access to catching them.

Unfortunately everyone wants a piece of the pie and theres not enough slices to go around. Who's expense does this some at? Not yours, mine, the tribes, big business cheap power advocates, or Joe Blow who wants to come to Forks to catch and keep a trophy wild steelhead. Its the friggin fish who ultimately suffer and the generations behind us who will have to deal with our stupidity.

So whats the solution??? Stop logging, all commercial netting, blow the dams, ban bait fishing, ban access to rivers and streams (since there is allways the redd of a species of andronomous fish in the river)? How about shooting every cormorant, seal, and kingfisher on the Northern Pacific Coast.
Let's ban C/R fishing since a portion of those fish die from fatigue, stress, chemical imbalance. Hell, its all a moot point since theres enough wild fish to merit our game dept. allowing us to conk an increased number wild steelies on some rivers. How about closing the Hoh to sportfishing early to protect the wild steelie run and letting the tribal nets go out the day afterward...oh wait that allready happend a few years ago. Banning all non-tribal netting was a novel idea. But that was pointed at a group that allready wasn't allowed any significant time to fish anymore..much less place their nets in the spawning lanes.

I guess my point is that there are way to many variables for us to control without a helluva lot of collaboration between all these interests. Is that going to happen? I doubt it. We're too greedy and our government is too stupid. Hell, lets blow the damns. Coals cheap.

Just a quick note on high seas driftnetting (my personal pet peeve). One post on this topic stated that high-seas driftnetting is not much of a problem. I strongly disagree. While our coast guard, the Canadians, and Russians do patrol the vast expanse of the North Pacific, there is no possible way they can effectively cover a small fraction of the ocean where salmon and steelhead from the Hoh, Lewis, Skeena, Snake, Rogue, Nushagak and ever other andronomous fish river all meld together in huge schools circulating in massive gyres. A U.S. Coastie officer I chatted with in Kodiak last fall let me know that they generally would like their chances better chasing the old needle in the haystack than looking for the some Taiwanese F/V Ying Ding Fa #4. Ever wonder why these boats all have a number following their name? 'Cause theres another couple of dozen sister ships (#'s 1-3 and 5-62) sneaking around the westernmost Aluetians strangling Bristol Bay Sockeye and Olympic Peninsula steelhead. In addition we have no control over what happens inside the Russian EEZ. While American fishermen are closely regulated on their commercial seasons for both time and areas th Russian fleets are allowed to fish at the 200 mile offshore edge of thier EEZ. Scale samples from fish heading into a Russian can in the last two years have proven that over 10% of thier catch originate in rivers of North America. I've got a sneaking suspicion of where the 12 million missing Bristol Bay sockeye ended up a few years ago. Hey we can't put leashes on our fish and tell them to stay on our side of the fence. They're free game out of international waters.


[This message has been edited by Chuckn'Duck (edited 04-08-2000).]