We as sport fishermen are continuallly watching and patrolling ourselves daily! :p :p :p

How many times do you think that the "Gill-netters" in the Columbia River, report their own fellow violators?

Cowlitzfisherman

Is the taste of the bait worth the sting of the hook?????

I would say that would be a big fat ZERO. I never have heard of any commercial fishery policing them, in fact I have friends who were commercial P-Sainers in Puget Sound netting the Chum fishery when open and they were actually targeting Feeders and getting 200-600 a night as "incidental catch" and boasting about it! By the way this was in the early 80's.

FOR THE SAME REASON THEY GET TO GO FIRST????

Definition: Politics (n) From the latin; Poly, meaning many, ticks, meaning blood sucking parasites. Any questions?

From my experience, commercials avoid that sort of policing because they don't want to be labeled by their peers as a whistle blower, not because they're all in it together. They don't want to get corked repeatedly by friends of the guys they report.

Like I said, that's my experience, and I never worked in that fishery. I'm not sure about the regs. you're talking about them violating, but it seems to me that most sport violations that get reported are things that are easily viewed. It's pretty hard to get close enough to another netter to see if he's got the legal mesh size, measure his net, etc.

I think maybe who is watching who becomes apparent when you find out WDFW is taking testimony and comments TODAY on the tangle[gill] net fishery in the Columbia in the spring. Seems they kind of snuck this meeting in!!!!!