Not sure if this has been covered.

I attended the Mill Creek meeting. I've followed this some but not nearly as involved as a number of the people at the meeting. Meeting was packed. Standing room only. The Bio in charge of the project (not Brett)was reviewing the project and went into Days that we will be able to fish. During his explanation, he mentioned 14 days. I caught it but figured I was just not up to date. That the people there pushing this for us knew what he was talking about. I was wrong. I think it was after the Bio mentioned the 14 days a 2nd time Tom Nelson spoke up and asked something like "did I hear you right? 14 days we will be on the water?".

The answer was Yes!! You could hear 100 + jaws hit the floor. The bedlam erupted. People were like where did this come from etc. Turns out that between NOAA, The Tribes & WDFW this will be a Highly Monitored fishery. The deal they made was that 4 Biologists & 2 WDFW Enforcement Officers have to be there every day we are fishing. That is where the funding comes in and what WDFW says is the lack of Man Power. Throw in that it is North of Falcon time for the Bio's and you have problems.

Then the funding issue got more interesting because people pushing this had been to 2 meetings where the WDFW Director had pledged to get Full Funding for the season. They stated he said it at 2 meetings and it was on tape.

At this point I'm not sure where the funding etc stands. I will tell you they use a 10% Mortality # to give the Tribes a quota and Sportsmen a #.

At least 1 person brought up "why bother for 14 days" because if the river is blown out it would still count as a day (not sure where that stands). My experience is if you don't take an opportunity or give it back there is a tendency to not get it again. I hope this helped.