Larry B-
While not a fan of this recent MA7 decision I do recognize that the Director has a very difficult job that at times will require making decisions that may be counter what many would like. Those decisions are often tempered by what I have often referred by political science rather than science. That is the reality of today's world. However if the Director is making those decisions (his job) with all the information; biological assessment from his staff and user input from the appropriate advisory group then I don't consider system broken.

Like many I do have some issues of lack of communication of what was going on (other options being considered) which lead to way too many unnecessary rumors and uncertainty, how the information got out, etc.

Chasin' Baitman -
I believe that the group Sky-guy is referring to would be more correctly called WDFW's PS sport fish advisors. That is a group that has taken on the task of trying to represent the diverse interest of the region's angler community in NOF and other venues. In effect the communication link between we anglers and the agency.

Regarding BC salmon in MA 7. In the last couple weeks my fishing partner and I have discussed MA 7 blackmouth fishery in detail. As part of those discussion he pulled together the recent code wire tag information from MA7 (thanks Eric!). One of the interesting things from that CWT information was how many BC tags were found. In the last two years available (2011-12 and 2012-13) out of the 252 tags recovered from the recreational fishery 50 or 19.8% were from BC hatcheries. I don't what portion of the BC hatchery fish are clipped but clearly there are some. While collectively there are lots of BC in MA 7 the dominate contributor to the Blackmouth fishery continues to the Skagit with 25.8% tags recovered.

Curt