All, The Colville Tribe will be having a meeting in Brewster on June 29th at 6pm to go over their plan for the Salmon Hatchery at Chief Joe Dam and their planned Salmon harvest. It is going to be at the Brewster Community Center. I would encourage all sport fisherman to attend this meeting as you all need to know what they are planning. I have attended several meetings with them on this. I am extremely skeptical of Tribal hunting and fishing and the abuse of resources. I am also optimistic (maybe foolishly but time will tell) this will be a great thing for the Colubmbia upriver salmon fishing. This hatchery will have an affect on the whole river, but a huge impact on the Salmon fishing above Priest Rapids. Everyone has questions, knowlege, and input, and they need to share and let everyone else know. Several points of interest that I have found.
Sport Fisherman or others such as business or communties have never made comments to the governing bodies in regards to upriver fishing specifically. The lower river has huge numbers of groups and individuals who give input/lobby the governing groups. Hence the catch allotments favor the lower river 10-1 over the upper river.
This hatchery will allow a 6 mo fishery in the upper river with proper season setting. Again sport fishermen need to get involved for the upper river regulations more.
Colvilles will explain what they are planning in regards to live capture currently and for the future. They are saying they will only catch and keep hatchery fish.
Also supposed to enhance the Steelhead fishing in the upper river.
The Colville's have said that they will not be catching or using the salmon for commercial purposes only for tribal member use. They will do some processing for year round consumption. They admit that based on projections they could never use all the returning fish, so they would be available for sport fishing.
Hatchery is supposed to start construction in spring 2010 and be completed that summer.
If Sport Fisherman work with the Colvilles it could be a huge political force by using the tribal fear from politicians and get some benefit for sport fisherman. The bad side is the potential to be used for only tribal gain, but I believe there are lots of areas to catch these fish between the tribal fishing. This is a scary area to go, but again I may be wrong but sport fisherman have a lot to gain.
I have moved from totally against this to optimistically cautious at this point. I'm just trying to do what I can to increase the salmon available to sport fisherman.
Get your questions together and ask them in a public meeting then at least we can feabily attempt to hold people accountable for what they said in the future.
