I was one of the crowd at the commission meeting today. Kudos to all who showed up, we had a pretty good turnout.

The washington commission voted for the most favorable option presented to them for sports fihers today. They directed Jeff Koenings to work towards a 60/40 split of the allowable impact on wild salmon, with the 60% of the impact going to the sportsfishers. This is pretty good, to my way of thinking, given the current situation. The likelihood is that we will be able to fish through April without any closures.

The Commission added language to the instruction that the Department have management flexibility to move 5% of the allowable impact between the user groups if conditions warranted. For example, if the Columbia blows mud so that the sporties can't access all their quota, the department is to have the flexibility to reallocate that amount to the commercials so it doesn't get wasted. I am leery of that instruction, as criteria were not given to the department as to what a reasonable reason for making this change would be. It is likely that any judgement would only go from the sporties to the commercials.

Of the people offering testimony, several individuals were notable. I am sorry for my probable misspellings of people's names.

Bob Schlect, of Bob's Sporting Goods (Longview), Rich Cado, of Far West Sports in Fife, Randy Ducet, of Three Rivers Marine, and Dan Grogan, of Fishermans Marine Supply all took time out to come up and speak for the fishery. Terry Turner and Jim Tuggle of the Washington Council of Trout Unlimited were right there to demand less impact on the steelhead. Mike Gilchrist was eloquent, as was Pete Morris (from Ifish). Several individuals got up and made themselves heard, and more sportsmen were in the crowd. All in all, my feeling was that a good showing was made by the sportsfihing team.

There were a couple of worrisome items. The WDFW staff is asking that allowable impact on wild winter steelhead be raised to a minimum of 5%, with authority to allow up to 7% impact. This is troublesome to many observers. No hard rationale was presented as to why this should be tolerable, and many of the sports representatives protested vociferously. For this to happen, I believe NMFS has to be consulted and to agree. I'm not preciely sure of the process.

I found the meeting to be pretty informative, and will be attending more in the future.

Perhaps others who were there can add some thoughts - I'm sure I missed a lot.

I was there as well, Glad to hear you were there too, I sat right next to Rich Kato from Farwest. Randy Prengel came along as well. I also saw Aunty M and Fishing ng there in attendence. Glad to see the sportsman finally get one.
Kudos to Rich , Randy, Pete, Liz, Jeff, Mike, Bob and all the other sports representitives who spoke.
Peace
Superfly

OK

Now that Washington's Commission meeting is now over….then what?
It was my understanding that ODFG commissioners recommended much more in favor of the commercials boys. So who decides now what the take/split quota will finally be. Do they flip a coin; draw a straw…. or what?

Or will the "deal" all be done behind closed doors? Who's got the answer?

Cowlitzfisherman

ODFW specified a range that was acceptable from 50% sport to 60% sport. WDFW specified a 60% sport target. When it comes down to negotiating a target 60% is the only thing WDFW is allowed to accept.

The only wiggle room WDFW commission gave was a +/- 5% in-season adjustment. This is intended for unforseen management issues. An example would be that if the river was high and muddy keeping the sport fisheries from catching a lot of fish a maximum 5% could be shifted to the commercail fisheries.