A fishery like that would require both enforcement and on the water monitoring. The days of auto-pilot management (should) be gone. WDFW simply no longer has the staff to do those things. Not only other priorities but simply lack of people.

Open a fishery on the Skagit and the enforcement that was doing shellfish, other steelhead, salmon, wildlife would have to be shifted. Due to the way money is managed, staff is assigned specific budgets, tasks, and times. When we wanted to open new/odd/different fisheries we checked with Enforcement to see if there were any officers available as they were given monthly (I think) work plans. Deviation meant either overtime of not doing something else.

The Columbia Endorsement was initially intended only for the Upper River because WDFW always said they didn't have the money to add monitoring and enforcement on those ESA-constrained fisheries. That may not be how it is used now, but that is how it was drafted.