It would surprise me if the state was not using fish-checker data to account for offset reporting inaccuracies. The fish-checkers provide a highly accurate crabs/boat check, and a count of boats, which provides a way to do better mathematically than just counting what is turned in.

So again, if the current netting is putting fish in the boats, then into the trucks to haul,
Who is counting the "harvestable" fish numbers vs the endangered ESA killed?

BIA endorsed the fishery, NOAA is apparently going to sign off on it, there is debate on how many of those are ESA and how many should be harvested (hatchery)...and it would seem real hard numbers would be easy to get.

but neither co-manager or the new manager in town, the BIA, seem to care or even talk about it.

In the race to kill the last one....smart money is on the indians.

...either way someone's going to get it.

So then you too are assuming that the tribes can't manage their own fisheries. Sorry, but I don't buy that anymore than someone saying the state can't manager its own fisheries.

I have absolutely no idea how the tribes fishing in the Skagit right now are monitoring their fisheries, but I do know something about how some tribes would be monitoring those fisheries. They would have tribal staff at all the landings on the river checking the catch (I am assuming here that the current fisheries for spring Chinook are probably ceremonial and subsistence more than commercial fisheries, since tribal commercial fisheries would have fish tickets to document sales. I am also assuming that there are probably just a handful of fishers operating, so it would be pretty easy to get a high sample rate.). If they were doing that sort of monitoring would you assume that the tribal staff would be willing to falsify what they saw? Just curious whether or not there is any point in responding further on this thread.

Just look at what happened to the Asiana flight at SFO a few years ago.....
That is a good metaphor to current model-based management.

Sorry but if the tribes are going to be held accountable for the actions of a tribal outlaw (I don't give a [Bleeeeep!] who he might be), then the state should also be held accountable for the actions of non-treaty outlaws, don't you think? And I will say again that the tribe participated in the investigation and arrest of this particular individual. I'm having a hard time seeing that as an indictment of the tribe. And yeah, I'll put 30 years of on the spot observation up against a couple of news articles or a 2015 return of CRC's no matter what the percentage. Oh and also a part of the public record is the reason for initiating the $10 penalty for failing to return your CRC. Looks like at the beginning ~ 2/3 of your licensed crab fishers were outlaws. Now you've got that portion of those breaking the law down to about 1/2. Good going!

WDFW NEWS RELEASE
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
600 Capitol Way North, Olympia, WA 98501-1091
http://wdfw.wa.gov/

September 8, 2008
Contact: Susan Yeager, (360) 902-2267

Commission approves penalty for
failure to report crab catch

OLYMPIA - A $10 penalty for failing to comply with Puget Sound crab catch-reporting requirements was approved by the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission during a meeting here Sept. 5-6.

The citizens commission, which sets policy for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), approved the department's proposal to begin enforcing the fine starting next year with catch reports due after the 2009 crab season.

Sport crabbers in Puget Sound are required to record their Dungeness crab catch on separate catch record cards - one for the summer season and one for the fall/winter season. People have the option of reporting that harvest information on the Internet or by mailing in their catch cards.

Under the new rules, crabbers who fail to report their catch will be required to pay $10 before a license vendor will issue a new catch record card for the following Puget Sound crab season. [/i]According to WDFW, less than a third of the 200,000 people licensed to fish for Dungeness crab in Puget Sound reported their catch as required.[i]

Also a part of the public record of any sport catch estimate reports for salmon is that only 25% of the CRC's are even being sampled. I don't know and really don't care how many are actually returned.

Yeah. You'll recall the Makah "overage" on winter trolled Chinook. While it is true that they had the data in handing did not respond, WDFW also had it and from what I heard did not even look at it.

Larry B., I agree that the two violations are not the same. I was just trying to point out that, as you note there are folks in both the treaty and non-treaty fisheries that don’t follow the rules, but that does not mean that the respective management entity, either the tribe in question or the State of Washington are responsible for those violations. Just for enlightenment on the topic of poachers, as a final post on this thread, I thought I would share some of my experience with some serious local non-Indian poachers, which really do exist.

I live in Olympia, and anytime anybody has fisheries open (treaty or non-treaty) for crab in southern Puget Sound or Hood Canal, there is a gentleman that comes into a local bar a couple of miles from my house selling crab. He is not Indian or associated with Indians (as that sort would not be welcome in that particular bar) and is not a commercial crabber, but he has crabs for sale every week. Regulars in the bar know him and how he comes by these crab and really don’t care. They support him wholeheartedly.

If you know the right places and/or the right names to drop, you can find this sort of thing all over – well at least every place I have looked. This includes places (mostly bars) from Shelton to Quilcene, and also includes a few of the well-known places we all pass that are located right on the Canal and Highway 101. So despite years of enforcement, there still appears to be the same counter culture of natural resource thieves that I ran across 30 years ago when I worked on the Canal. Since there has been more development of full-time residences on the Canal, I doubt that it is as extensive as it once was, but it does still exist.

I know that area well, and am also known in a lot of those places, so the thought has crossed my mind that maybe it is not as wide-spread as I think. Maybe because of my connections, I was able to find those sorts of folks. That thought changed a couple of years ago, when I went to stay at Birch Bay for a few days for the first time in my life. After checking in and poking around for a few hours, I ended up in a local bar right next to where I was staying. After a couple of drinks and some conversation with folks in the bar, which turned to discussion about fishing, I was invited to participate in an illegal crab fishery the next day by one of the bar patrons. Even though I had never met him, he gave me his name and number to call to join him if I wished. After he left I talked to several of the patrons there asking about this fellow, and they all assured me that it would be perfectly fine to join him in this as many of them had done it before, without any problem.

I have more stories to share (Curt and Hal might be more interested in a few) but I hope I’ve made my point. Like you, I recognize that there are outlaws in treaty and non-treaty fisheries, some of them much more serious than not turning in crab or salmon CRC’s. Their existence, however, does not mean that the respective management entities condone or support them.

Last post on this thread.

The springers going up the Puyallup are White river tribal hatchery fish...