I Just returned from the political discussion at seacrest pier this evening. I'm wondering if anybody else was there, and what you're opinions are, of the answers given to us by Mr Padilla. My personal opinion is that he managed to evade any real answers to most of the questions presented to him. Also,his refusal to even consider re-opening the pier to C&R fishing,or coho fishing,I thought was very lame. These guys, for the most part, are fishing here because they lack acess to a boat. Also, they seem very self-regulating,and try to keep people from cheating.Wdfw claims 300 chinook have been caught at the pier, while guys who fish there every day were saying the number is closer to 100. Boating sportsmen, and indian nets together have taken 7to8thousand fish, come on!!! what is a hundred or so fish compared to these numbers?? Also, a lot of pier caught fish are probably southbounders, not even from the green river stocks.GIVE THE LITTLE GUY A BREAK!!!!

Weren't any of the TV news crews there?? I checked out CH 4/5/7/13 late news and saw nothing about the pier meeting. Guess they thought a singing dog and a hail storm in England were more important to local viewers!

Well I thought he was a pro at beating around the bush! The real problem seams to be the wdfw knows the green river run is being miss managed but they just aren't doing [Bleeeeep!] about it. He had some good things to say but once again, will these ever happen. He even said the Muckleshoots were embaressed that most the run was harvested by themselves. Ya, and I dont like catching fish!!! Those netters are laughing all the way to the bank and smoker. I hope a bunch of angry and concerned angler makes Padilla open his mind a little. We need to keep attending the public meetings on what happens to our fisheries. In my opinion, its really scary to see the people responsible for our resourse. We need more people in the wdfw that care about the sporties. Sad thing is he still couldn't give an answer as to why they keep letting the tribes net when they already have a much higher percentage of the run.

danO of BK,
I had trouble with that statement something about if they only "net" 100 fish they said they would have a closure, but then he said something about getting 400 fish, I must have
missed hearing something there,did one of you guys catch what he was saying about that? My daughter was keeping me a little busier than I hoped and it was hard enough to hear without keeping tabs on her also.
(Gee, guess which guy I was).

King 5 news had a story on their 5 o'clock show, I believe, last friday. They interviewed some guy representing the sporties and showed something like a 5 minute protest "fish-in". They also interviewed a local game warden.

I'd watch King 5. They're the only ones who seem to understand the magnitude of these problems whereas, channels 4 and 7 bombard us with "Erics little heroes" and the daily drivel about how bad Seattle's traffic is.

An additional kudos to king 5 last night. They did a story on the experimental use of tangle nets by the commercial boys. These would be the nets to possibly replace gill nets. Sure didn't see that on any other station!

The problem is the same as it has always been. Even though the sportsman foots the bill, we are never herd. Unlike the Indians and commercial fisherman we have no voice. Maybe us sportsman should get together and buy our own lobbyist. I would gladly pay extra to finally have that voice. Perhaps we should boycott the fishing in this state by not buying a license next year and really show this state where the money comes from and to stop screwing with the hand that feed you.

Just my 2 cents

RainyCity, I think what he was trying to say, was that if their initial test fishery only yielded 100 fish, they would not fish any more, they reportedly caught 400, and decided to go ahead with the commercial harvest. I saw KOMO TV there and another camera I could not identify. They filmed a little, but since there was no mayhem, I guess it was deemed not interesting enough to air. Belive me, these right wing conservative TV stations we have in seattle are not going to air anything that would be considered politically-incorrrect, or indian bashing, such as sportsman discussing why the tribes are netting a run to extinction.Well, the salmon are returning now in our first year of being on the ESA endangered list, and when the federal watchdogs check, and see how badly wdfw, and the tribes have mis-managed the green river run, you can bet that we will probably lose our right to fish anywhere in central puget sound, not to mention the millions of dollars of funding that we will probably not qualify for. Mr Padilla, I hope your resume is updated, as we all know feces rolls downhill, and you sir, are the fall guy at the bottom. [I was the guy who asked at the beginning of the discussion, why we couldn't let the escapement goal run upstream before ANY fishing was allowed.]