I wish that were the case...there's an awful lot of uneducated fear about it being bandied about by some of our sportfishing brethren, which plays right into the commercial guys' hands.

Fish on...

Todd

I think the plan is to force the white guys to fish selectively in the mainstem even though they have the smallest impact on the listed stocks of all fisherys. This will somehow force the tribes to follow suit and then everything will be just fine..Code name for this plan is (Brain Surgery Through the Behind)

IMO, Blake’s committee is like a team making it to the play offs. It is a momentous event for the sportsmen in the state of WA to get where we haven’t been before. Talking about eliminating gillnets at the legislative level. Once you make it to the play offs, it’s a new season for underdogs and favorites alike and anybody can win, but you can’t win if you aren’t there.
Fan support is important and encouraged.
If for some reason no nets where allowed on the CR for non tribal fishers, I would imagine the only people upset would be the non tribal commercial fishers.
If the sportsmen really want a change in the contentious CR, the time is supposedly drawing closer if Blake keeps his side of the bargain.

You're right louie. I just hope he doesn't get a Rico examination. We only saved the commission by one vote in that committee. The CR is only one issue. We have many that need his approval. He actually likes to fish with a rod, unlike the guy thats retiring.

maybe when we go to hatchery only coho off the coast it will force the tribes to do the same thing, oh wait, i guess we did along time ago but they haven't went selective yet.

Over the years i have "heard" of such a economic study in terms of hathcery spending and economic activity for the various user groups.

i.e 100$ per angler day for sportsfishing, ect.

but never found one that i could call "accepted by all sides (or accepted enough to write a law around it)

if you know of one, or can point me to the one the mitchell act talks about, i would love to read it. the problem has always been, when someone pushes a economic theory about fish, its always rebuted by one side or the other as either over-representing or under representing impact.

If there is a presidence for a study being sited.. i really really need to read it.

todd can you provide me a link..?


joshua

I think the tribe's learned long ago when you give something up it's hell to get back..

Here's some good stuff about the MItchell Act, and the economics around it...

http://www.fws.gov/gorgefish/springcreek/reports/MA%20Fact%20Sheet%203_3_06.pdf

Fish on...

Todd

From the Chinook Observer

Editorial: Diverse fishing methods coming back
Important to ensure fairness for families invested in gillnetting
There are a great many ways to catch a salmon, though you'd never guess it from watching common practices on the Lower Columbia River in 2010. When it comes to commercial fishing, gillnets have been just about the only show on the water for decades. This may be about to change.

There's no doubt that gillnets are a highly effective means of catching commercial quantities of fish. Mesh sizes, placement, timing and other factors give them good flexibility in what they catch and what they allow to pass. The men and women who operate gillnets are brave and highly skilled artists, worthy of celebration.

But at least one thing gillnets don't do very well is tell hatchery salmon from those that spawn naturally, which we deem worthy of much greater protection. As their name implies, gillnets mostly catch fish by their gills, and they must be hauled aboard to be examined. Unmarked "wild" salmon are put back in the water, but a good many are believed to die from injuries or exhaustion.

Go back a century or even less, and there was a far more dynamic range of commercial fishing options on the Columbia. Purse seining, beach seining, fish traps (also known as pound nets), fish wheels and dip nets were all used at various locations from the river's mouth to The Dalles, Ore. In the first half of the 20th century, nearly all these methods were outlawed, except by tribal members.

Various justifications were put forth at the time for bans on fishing methods, including conservation. There were legitimate concerns that fisheries were being over-exploited and depleted. Behind the scenes, however, the decision to go with gillnets may have had as much to do with regional politics and economic manipulations as with sincere motives to perpetuate the health of fish runs.

But without refighting old battles, the interesting fact is that today state fisheries experts are working with people in both Oregon and Washington to re-examine assumptions about old fishing methods and perhaps revive some for the 21st century.

At a Longview meeting two weeks ago, Washington Fish and Wildlife officials brought the public up to speed on recent trials of purse seines, beach seines and a modernized floating type of fish trap called a Merwin trap. As in the distant past, both beach and purse seines worked very well, but the floating trap less so - previous experiments have found them susceptible to becoming fouled by debris carried in the water column.

All these methods offer the distinct advantage of minimizing injuries and time out of the water for non-hatchery fish.

The bigger, far-thornier issues will come if the states and feds decide it's worth shaking things up and bringing these methods back into licensed use. Who will get the licenses? Who will get the most desirable seining grounds and river locations? Who will give up existing run allocations?

Families that have invested generations of time, money and blood in gillnetting will be justified in watching carefully and deserve a good deal of deference. But if better fishing methods preserve the nation's extremely expensive native salmon, maybe some of the money saved can go into making these allocation decisions palatable to today's fishermen.

"New" fishing methods - and the politics surrounding them - will be a fascinating process to observe

Nice discussion. I will catch up on it tomorrow.
Thanks,

Sounds like CCA got the ball rolling, no stopping her now..

Take a nap. I will wake you in 2012.

Families that have invested generations of time, money and blood in gillnetting will be justified in watching carefully and deserve a good deal of deference.


Why? That isn't what happened in 1935 when Int. 77 passed putting competitors of gill netters out of business in the Columbia R. by banning traps and all other types of nets.

A little history:

" Early in 1934 they formed the Salmon Conservation League. Described by its founders as “an expedient combination of both commercial and sports interests” (Washington Sportsman, 2, Feb.–Mar. 1936, p. 4), the league brought together the Washington State Sportsmen’s Council, which claimed to represent 120 sportsmen’s clubs with some 40,000 members (Washington Sportsman, 2, Apr.–May 1936, p. 15), the Purse Seine Fishermen’s Association, the Puget Sound Gill Netters’ Association, and the Trolling Vessel Owners’ Association. The commercial fishermen’ s associations provided the money, and the sportsmen’ s groups supplied the manpower (Washington Sportsman, 2, Feb.–Mar. 1936, p. 4).

On February 1, 1934, the Salmon Conservation League filed Initiative Measure No. 77 with the Secretary of State and began to circulate petitions to collect the voter signatures required to place it on the November ballot under the guise of conservation but the gillnetters also despised the operators of the fish wheels farther upriver. It galled them to witness fish being dumped rhythmically into huge piles without so much as an erg of human effort being exerted. The wheels, with their enormously visible productivity, seemed capable of destroying the salmon runs and with them the livelihood of the gillnetters. The lower river men were reluctant to recognize publicly that the gillnets, being so numerous, captured many times more salmon than the small number of productive wheels".
History also shows that the commercial partners in the coalition in 1937 started back stabbing their partners the sportsmen by changing boundaries and rules to name afew.

I can't speak for the other sportsmen, but gillnetters are not going to get any support or sympathy from me due to history.

do you really think the state will demand them to change to a different gear type and force some of them out ??

Ah gee, the gillnetter dispised those efficient upriver fish wheels. Sheesh, at their peak, fish wheels accounted for 3% of the Columbia River commercial fish harvest. I'd take the fish wheels over the gillnetters in a heartbeat.

Sg

With your reasoning, and I'm not saying it's incorrect, it would appear that the SAFE Areas will in fact be the commercial harvesters designated fishing zones.
That's if you look at what has been done over the past 14 years.
Now if only Oregon could elect a Governor who's on board with this plan, wonder where Chris Dudley stands on this issue?

You talking about Armageddon? I think that's what you mean right?

Keith

I'm still trying to get the mental image of waking up with LB in the sack with me out of my head.

Is getting those gillnets out as go for you as it is for me as he was taking a long drawn drag off of that camel cigarette.

I’ll leave you two alone, since my wife finally got her stuff done so we can take off on a late departure for vacation.

i dont think you understand how the rcw`s work.