Reported by Mark Yuasa in the Seattle Times today. This proposal at first included all of Puget Sound and was intended to lengthen the blackmouth season by making it a fin clipped retention only fishery with a two fish limit per day. There was resistance to this plan from the tribes so it was trimmed down to only include areas 8-10....Now it is a dead plan.

Some folks say that the uproar over the Makah catch caused the tribes to retaliate against this plan. The tribes were victorious in court giving them veto power over all selective fisheries for Coho ro Chinook.

The Seattle Times did not report the reason given for nixing the blackmouth plan.

I think you will find that there is a lot more to this story that will come out of the North of Cape Falcon meetings and PFMC meetings in the next few weeks. The winter blackmouth Chinook selective fishery is not off the table but may take some time to develop and it may look a lot like the summer time experiment in catch areas 5 and 6.

PNW: Please do not view this as an attack on you or the tribes, but as an honest question. Why are the tribes often resistant to fin clipping? I ask you, as you seem to be knowledgable about many aspects of tribal fisheries and want to understand where the tribes are coming from on this issue.

Dave - Based on my past experience and observation, I think each tribe operates under different conditions and therefore must make policy decisions based on those conditions.

Let's take adipose fin clipping of hatchery coho as an example....

Tribe A may have its own successful hatchery program. This hatchery might produce a million smolts each year. The fishery that Tribe A depends on is a big bunch of hatchery coho returning to the home stream over the space of a few weeks. Tribe A plans on operating a major fishery, harvesting 10,000 to 20,000 coho each year and they can do so with little impact to the natural coho production because the timing of the hatchery fish is earlier than the naturally produced fish. Tribe A might have 25 to 50 fishers, and their families, who depend on the seasonal income generated in this fishery. In simple terms, this Tribe would likley not want to cllip the adipose fin on the coho they produce. Doing so allows greater harvest to occur out in the ocean, in the Strait, other PS areas and out in front of their home stream... reducing the amount available for harvest by tribal fishers in the home stream.

Tribe B may not have its own hatchery and may not have much of a fishery on hatchery coho. Tribe B may only need access to the hatchery coho for its members to harvest and use at home. Their needs might number in the hundreds, not thousands of fish. While Tribe B might not care too much whether the WDFW clipped the adipose fin on fish raised in the near-by WDFW hatchery they may have other political issues with WDFW or the State that do not allow them to "go along" with the adipose fin clipping proposal. Most policy decisions do not get made in a vaccum.

Tribe C may be neutral on the issue. Their need for hatchery produced coho is in-between that of Tribe A and B. They may be involved with a joint hatchery coho production effort with a neighboring tribe's hatchery or possibly with a nearby WDFW facility. They know their "mid-level" need for coho hinges on whichever way their hatchery production partner wants it to go. So they ride the fence. They only make decisions on this hatchery fish issue when it gets cranked up to the boiling point.

And, there are a number of other realistic hypotheticals that could be cooked up, but this is enough to illustrate my explanantion.

As described, the three hypothetical tribes do not have much in common when it comes to adipose fin clipping hatchery coho. What you get from them may range across the full spectrum. But what all three hypothetical tribes do have in common is a commection to federal funding sources. They also have Norm Dicks in common because Norm is "the man" when it comes to federal appropriations in this State.

What years of local (State and Tribes) debate could not accomplish is made more simple and final when federal funding is at stake. While pulling on the Tribe's "federal funding string" seems to have worked, as far as getting the Tribes on-board, let us be clear that the techincal issues of mass marking have not all been worked out.... particulalry for Chinook. Fin clipping fish for hook-n-line harvest is a means to an end but does not solve the many technical issues that linger on.

Hope that helps some.

That is a reasonable enough explanation. The tribes do not want to harvest "their fish". We don't want to harvest to many wild fish so we would like to mass mark. Thanks to Norm Dicks those who wish to take federal money must fin clip now. We have a long ways to go to achieve a reasonable level of fin clipped fish. Theoretically we do this so we can prosecute more fisheries and still protect the wild fish. Since the tribes do not participate in the plan to save wild fish for the most part why would they care to fin clip? Lots of fish of hatchery origin are caught each season that are not clipped but depending on where the fishery is a clipped fish could be the only fish the non-tribal fishers are allowed to keep.

Take Grays Harbor for example. Non-tribal commercials complain that they must use special mesh sizes and recovery boxes and keep only clipped fish while right next to them in the same fishery are the tribes fishing without the protections for the ESA fish .

That's the rub. Why fin clip if half the fish or more are harvested without regard to wild status? If snagging is so bad why is netting wild fish so tolerable to you?

Why didn't he just say "Greedy"!

Once again it's the same oh same oh. The tribes live by a different set of rules than we do, take what they want when they want and then create problems for others who try to share in the resource. The tribes would've probably nixed this anyway you look at it because it might interfere with them taking another 20,000 plus fish next winter.

I think you are taking this on a tangent. Lets be "real" here. What is the true purpose of applying the adipose fin clip to coho produced from hatcheries? You're "We don't want to harvest to many wild fish" is not the real answer. If it were, the adipose fin clip would have been removed as the "flag" for coded wire tagged fish 20 years ago when we started having low wild coho productivity and low coho marine survival concerns.

The real answer is that the State wants its fishers, sport and commercial alike, to harvest more of the hatchery coho that are produced. A reasonable goal. But why would some people call it "greed" call it "me first" or things of that nature?

The very reason that the State initiated and continues to pursue the adipose fin clip mark and the mark selective fishing on coho salmon (for example) produced in State hatcheries, is the same exact reason the Tribes (generally) do not support the application of the adipose fin clip on the coho they produce.

Its quite simple really... the producers of the hatchery coho are wanting their fisheries to derive the greatest benefit from the fish they produce. Again, call it greed or anything else you want... it is the primary motivator in both cases.

I am not so sure that my typical Sekiu experience of hooking and releasing 10 wild coho in order to keep one marked coho is a good way to protect wild coho... but that is my opinion. I was not able to follow these hooked and released fish to their home stream to insure they were able to successfully survive and reproduce.

And we do NOT have a long way to go to achieve a reasonable level of clipped fish. In the case of hatchery coho, we are nearing the 80% to 90% clipped rate for coho produced in hatcheries (all hatcheries) around the Puget Sound basin, if not higher. This excludes Canadian hatchery coho, of course, but I don't think Norm's sphere of influence extends quite that far.

"Since the tribes do not participate in the plan to save wild fish for the most part why would they care to fin clip?" Could you make a more broad/inaccurate statement? I doubt it.

Let's just put it this way....Anyone who knowingly nets wild fish in large numbers does not have the long term welfare of wild fish at heart....

I think the simple answer to why fin clip is to easily distinguish between hatchery and wild fish.

Unclipped fish with wire tags must be killed first and then scanned to see which hatchery they came from.

"Since the tribes do not participate in the plan to save wild fish for the most part why would they care to fin clip?"
Fed MONEY= Greed

I repeat.... call it anything you want, it works the exact same way whether you are on one side of the issue or the other. No difference.

You better call Norm Dicks first thing in the morning and fill him in so we don't waste any more money on fin clipping. There are so many people who need to hear your side of the story before we keep going down this useless path of fin clipping.

Norm Dicks is a politician. Politicians make political decisions. Tribes have politicians who make political decisions too. One decision is no more right than the other. Think about it.

I'm glad this one didn't go through. This is more of a takeaway for Marine sportsfisherman than a benefit. Getting a selective fishery in May through August would be awsome in 8-10. But tacking on 2 weeks in April isn't enough for me. Ya, 8 and 9 are closed now Jan - Feb 15, but 10 is open at that time.

jeffed, you'll probably grow old and gray and never see a selevtive fishery as you proposed again. The winter fishery was also a lot more than a couple of extra weeks. It would mean those area's being open from Oct. through April with a selective fishery for the fish that we're already paying for with our license fee's. As it is now they close the area's during their most productive time to limit our catches. This would've been a true opportunity to restore a fishery to us that was taken away year's ago to protect endangered runs in the sound. Why should'nt we have the opportunity to have a selective harvest on these fish?

I don't know about you Hoghunter, but I don't get that many fin clipped fish anymore fishing in areas 8-10. I've had several days this winter where I've fished hard and finally gotten a legal fish, that under this proposal would be put back because it wasn't fin clipped. With this proposal we are unilaterally tied to hatcheries. You can argue that we already are as sports fisherman, I'm just wondering if this would truly make us better off. I am not affraid to admit that I prefer to retain my fish in the salt, especially the hatchery ones. I'm affraid that this would lead to more days of coming home empty handed.

Something tells me that this is just another expample of sportfisherman negotiating with themselves and giving away more of our qouta to tribal and commercial interests. What happens after this is implemented and hatchery budgets get cutt? We'll just be cutt out almost completely, just like the crab....

You make some good points and in many ways I feel the same. We continue to be handed the droppings after the tribes and commercials get their share and you might note they always get the first whack at crab, shrimp and everything else. We then get the leftovers. I have been seeing a mix of about 65% clipped to 35% unclipped this winter and I fish in areas 8 to 10 with most of it being in area 9. I spoke with several charters awhile back and they claim that chinook are being marked 100% now. But who knows. What I'm going on is the simple fact that we get less and less fishing days and more and more restrictions and then when they do let us fish it's often at times that are less than prime. In the old days, prime winter blackmouth in the central sound was from mid - October to mid- January. We only get one month of that now in area 9. It's especially frustrating when you see the numbers that the Makah's pulled this winter and many past winters and then they want to nix a selective fishery for the sportsman. I think that downright stinks.

From the last I heard the tribes that were not in compliance with fin clipping are the Tulalip,Quinault,and the Hood Canal tribes.

After reading this whole thread, one serious thought comes to mind...

People are going under the assumption (dangerous things...assumptions) that if they catch a non-clipped fish that it is of WILD origin...and from PNW's comments, such may not be the case.

Those unclipped fish could be just as much hatchery fish as the one that is adipoise clipped...just that it didn't get clipped on the way out the hatchery door.

Might be interesting to gety GPS trackers on a few of those unclipped fish and see which hatchery they return home too...

Mike