Originally Posted By: Lucky Louie
Originally Posted By: ondarvr
Some of these Chums could be targeted further out in the salt, but the tribes and local NI netting has been closed, and is supposed to be closed this year too.


There will be commercial take on the Snohomish chum stock this year with a twist.

In some recent past years, only the tribe has fished the salt for the most part for chums. The commercial fishing schedule will double down this year with the non tribal commercials fishing as well --not only in 8D but 8A as well.

You can have a sure winning bet placed that the return of chum to the Snohomish River system will be low this year but within the realm of escapement needs only.

Commission policy provides for some fishing for chum for sport if it is open to commercials. We are shooting ourselves in the foot if we don’t take advantage of it in NOF. Either we get our share or the commercials take our share.

It is a fallacy to believe that more chums will be coming back to the Snohomish if sport fishers do not claim our share.


Here is the problem, if you open the Sky to Chums the onslaught of snagging them right off the redds is in full force. The only area with any Chum spawning now is right where most of the bank access is located, and we all know how that plays out. The only chance the fish have is to let them spawn in peace.

If they open it for netting (by anyone) where this run can be targeted, then the managers are the problem and there is very little that can be done about it, and whether it's open for sportsman in the river or not the same number of chums will be netted and killed, getting every bit of their allocation and more has never been a problem for commercial and tribal netters. On small runs they tend to get almost everything that returns, even if that means more than their quota.

Right now the cookie jar is empty, we would be grabbing for the last few crumbs, we would be destroying the cook, cookie sheet, oven and recipe. Which means no cookies in the future.


PS. These are not the last few remaining unharvested hatchery fish that "must die", these are the last few remaining unharvested wild fish that "must survive".