Hmm, good or bad? that's a good question. I think if I was a wild fish I'd be pretty happy if the nets work as they are supposed to. However, as a sports fisherman I'm just a little concerned. It seems to be a bit of a "double edged sword". Yes, it will be good for wild fish survival into the rivers. But what happens when Joe Blow is catching only wild steelhead on his favorite OP river [ie:a river where it's "legal" (I said legal not ethical) to retain wild steelies] and he can't buy a hatchery brat to bonk. Will it bring more pressure on already low wild fish stocks from sporties?
Also, will the tribes actually convert to the new nets? They seem to fight any notion of selective fishing now (such as fish wheels), while at the same time they push the release of non-finclipped fish (south fork of the clearwater river in Idaho is an example of this).
I think your concerns of the commercial fleet taking over the sport fishing, non-tribal allocation are valid as well. Unfortunately, in the past the commercial big money has usually gotten priority over the sporties and the new nets will just give them more ammo to tip the scales in their favor.
What we really need now is for a more conservative management approach towards fisheries. They need to get rid of the maximun sustained harvest models and move to maximum sustained yield type models. Until the managment mentality changes the use or abuse of any high production fishing method could prove detrimental to all the fishes futures. Unfortunately, the only way for the management schemes to change in this direction is to get the big money commercial groups out of the game all together ie:no nets.

Sorry, just my opinion

Duke