It seems obvious forecasts are what they are, but for real time, who generates the counts for salmon and crab? Seeing the seiners out in 10 yesterday, and now gill nets all over this morning, they gotta be making money (hammering fish). Who counts em for dividing up the harvestable, and for counting wild impacts? Are those counts at all accurate, or is it smoke and mirrors?

At least "back in the day" the fishermen were required to sell their commercial catch to state-licensed dealers. The number of fish bought, species, pounds, and price were all recorded on fish tickets which were required to returned to WDF by mail. But, WDF also had samplers who were in the buyer's businesses daily, going through all the tickets, recording the numbers, and then sending that into WDF by FAX (I think). Anyway, WDF had a computerized data system that tad about 98% of single day's catch "on the system" within 3 days. State and Tribal.

I believe, now, that the State employs a similar system to the above but only for the Cowboys. The Indian catch follows the same sort of process (sell only to Tribal licensed buyers) but I don't know how fast the data is shared and uploaded.

As to accuracy, that would be in the eye of the beholder. Did the fisherman report "take home" (available to both sides)? When the catch is large, generally a sample is weighed to get average weight and then the total weight is divided by the average to get the number. Essentially, all the management systems (rec, commercial) depend on the honesty of the reporter.

Those who have been inside the system all can tell stories of fish that somehow were never reported. The assumption is that the non and mis reporting are rather small and average out across all harvests.

I'll put a bit different spin on this. Yes, the management systems depend on the honesty of the reporter but that is not simply altruistic. Compliance is significantly driven by law enforcement and perceived risk of being caught either not reporting or significantly under reporting harvest and the potential impact (confiscation of catch, fines/loss of license) if caught.

Yes, a few fish or crab being taken home (not included in catch reports) probably are insignificant and average out. But which commercial operators have been found in recent years to be involved in large scale illegal harvest and unreported sales - primarily of shellfish? Tribal members. And what has been the adjudication of those apparently illegal activities within the tribal court system? No one knows outside the tribe(s).

Not hard to draw a conclusion as to why such activities continue.

Those have been reported in the papers, to be sure. Commercial fishermen told me of fairly large numbers of fish that they sold over the bank, or, in the case of 400 lbs of steelhead (20 fish), just donated them to needy immigrants.

As long as this is made an "only you guys do it" (whoever you guys is) it won't be solved. We need significantly more enforcement and higher penalties across the board.

I have heard that in most states the poaching loss of big game exceeds the reported kill. Those aren't all Tribal members.

Just to be clear I never said it was just one side. What I did point out was that one side has an active LE/judicial process to include prosecution and penalties which is open to public view (to include all co-managers) whereas the other side not so much. It is, in my opinion, that ability to operate outside of the general public's scrutiny which enables certain co-manager fishers to engage in large scale illegal operations.

Yes, we need more enforcement and we need higher penalties for serious infractions - but equally needed is assurance that all the participants play by the same rules to include the judicial process.

Most everything the co-Managers do is outside of public scrutiny. They like it that way.

"They like it that way." Says it all.....