Friday the 12th is the last day to fish Elliott Bay. WDFW has closed it.

Now that the fish have arrived of course they will shut it down.

I heard the indians took 1200 fish and dumped all of their trash Wed night. I also know of three nice 20+ fish taken this morning with a fourth lost at the net. Time to close her down boys. Thanks for paying!

Sad but true

It's about time! It should remain closed until numbers are appropriate for allowing a boat fishery.

it should have never been open in the first place. cause according to one of my indian friend that nets the bay. it opened before they could even do a test net or what ever it is they do. and thats a bunch of crap.

run_a_bait -
Under that philosphy then the ocean, Neah Bay, Sekiu, area 9, area 10, etc should never open. There is no way to have timely test fisheries for any of those fisheries to have certainty. There would also never be a summer steelhead fishery and any winter steelhead would be limited to after the first of the year for hatchery and even later for the wilds to allow time for test fisheries to determine run sizes so that we can know if run sizes are large enough to safely fish.

Are you seriously suggesting that fisheries be managed that way? If so how and who would do the various test fisheries?

Tight lines
Curt

actually for the past few years the indians have done a test fishery before they open the bay. and this year they didn't do that till after the bay was open. if they had done the test fishery the game department would have seen that there was a lack of fish and wouldn't have opened it. plus they shouldn't have opened it a week early in the first place. even all my indian friends agree with me. and that coming from the mucklshoots them selves

run_a_bait -
I think you missed my point -why should the Elliot Bay terminal fishery be managed differently than many other fisheries? Given your position why not delay the openings of Marine areas 10, 9 or any other until the test fishery? I can see why the tribe may like that kind of management - unless the State is willing to harvest its share of the salmon with gill nets the tribe will end up with a larger portion of the catch (the significiant portion the uncaught non-treaty share seems to end up in their nets ).

The last several years the sport fishery has opened prior to the tribal test fishery results. The reason of course is for the sport fishery to have a chance to catch a reasonable portion of the harvest. Even so the tribal catch has gone at least it share. If the sport fishery delays fishing until the run can be reliably updated it would not open until early August at the earliest.

As I recall the sport catch in Elliot Bay was 900 fish prior to yesterday's fishery while the tribal catch was nearly 1,600 fish caught during their one day opening plus the test fisheries. Are you really happy with the catch sharing?

Ask your indian friends why do they insist on limiting the Bay and River fishery by the sporties even when the update shows harvestable numbers of fish?

While I would be more than willing to consider different management schemes - espeically if they give the fish a break - there needs to be some equity in the sharing of the catch.

Tight lines
Curt

i agree with what your saying. but knowing that the salmon runs have been down all season long. no springers no sockeye, and no summerrun steelhead. and knowing so that the runs have been down they should have made sure to do the test fishery first to at least see if what size of a run to expect. cause i know as well as everyone else does. the wdfw sure has no idea what the hell they are doing when it comes to run size prediction. at least this year anyway.

and my tribal friends weren't for the opening of the bay nor were they for the netting of fish.

but they aren't the greed type of mukleshoots that we all have grown to know and love.

but thats just my opionion on this. i feel that if there is a lack of fish in a system then it should not be opened for tribal or sportfishing. no one group should be able to take fish from that system unless everyone can take fish. and thats how it should be. cause i do;t like to see nets all the way across a river while us sport guys can't fish the river.

Get out and fish! Like I've been saying, the fish are around. They are running late, but they are all over the sound right now. Find the bait and the fish are not far away. Silvers, Kings, and Pinks.
I think we will see a good push of fish once we break this dry spell with a little rain. The fish were not around in July. In 25 years of fishing the sound I have only had 2 or 3 seasons that were better than this one in August. I have seen more fish over #30 than any other year. Why do people complain? My only grief with the fishery this year and the last few is that they close it to hatchery fish....
IMO these fish should be shipped straight to the BBQ
Neal

So why didn't the Muckleshoots quite if they were so worried?

takedown, the same reason they never quit. It's the sporties or non/tribal fisher's that are supposed to conserve not the tribes. Haven't you learned that by now living in this state.