Free: Contests & Raffles.
my honest opinion and i know i am gonna catch crap for this but oh well, my stance is, shut down all commercial fishing, including out in the ocean i mean shut it all down for everything, and shut down all native nets, no one family needs that much salmon in a year especially when i see native nets come out of the water and then those same natives are at the local ampm selling their catch right out of their totes, if anyone wants fish or shellfish or whatever else commercial and natives catch, then go catch it youself or do without, it wouldnt break my heart because i know how to fish and gather shellfish, crab or what have ya, i really dont care if you cant fend for yourself and dont know how to fish, not my problem, go learn just like i did, but to me that is the ONLY way to fix are fisheries, not by putn more regs and jackn up prices....
I'm sure HF will attest to this, but here on the west side thereis a runoff storm drain fee/tax each year. It is for "Manageing runoff issues" I know every new housing developemnt has water retention ponds with cattails to hold and treat runoff. Many of these so called runn off studies are must not take this into account. I also am some what suspect of what some counties are using this fund for... For the ammount of $$$ they come up with they should be addding retention ponds like crazy negating existing roads and problems.
JimmyHoffa-Yes the Bolt decision allowed indians to stretch their nets across half of the river, this was determined by some people who obviously have never spent a minute on a river. The bolt decision originally said indians could only net half of the salmon/fish that entered the river, and the regulatory means for this was to implement a netting restriction allowing the nets to only cover half the river at a time.I always see nets across the whole river, or if not they are stagger set to ensure they catch 99% of what is in the river because the indians know fish do not swim in a zig zag pattern.H&F
I get really frustrated talking about this stuff! One of the reasons NOTHING happens is becuase we do not focus on things that 90% of us agree on... Lets just start with 1 example... Mergansers/sawbills... Is there ANYONE that thinks its a good idea to have them as part of the normal bag limit? The Gov Beurocracy LIKES it when large coalitions of people band together to make change happen.... I cannot think of very many people that would not support a change to this kind of legislation... I would immagine tribes, commercial fishermen, Hunters, Sport fishermen, Farmers, and anyone else affected by the salmon issue would thow thier support behind having a seperate limit like the other flyways... Now i know many of you may say that "____ has more effect on salmon runs than Mergansers!" Well SO WHAT! It would be a step in the right direction. It may not be as BIG a change as many of you would like, but hey it would be in the right direction! If we bann together on many of these "predator issues" we can build a large body of support..
Banning commercial fishing in the US won't solve any problems. According to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch (http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.aspx), most of the US wild fisheries are run in a sustainable manner, Alaska Salmon got a "best choice" for example. Other countries harvest irresponsibly. The Japanese have basically admitted that they are going to fish the Blue Fin Tuna to extinction. But what can we do about that?We are, however destroying ocean stocks in other ways. Farm runoff is creating huge "dead zones" in the gulf of Mexico. Tiny plastic particles are poisoning filter feeders who mistake them for plankton. Mercury and other toxins are bio-accumulating in large Ocean mammals. Perhaps most stupidly, we are depleting bedrock baitfish stocks like Herring, to make hog feed and farm fertilizer. And habitat depletion is the number 1 cause of NW salmon run declines.
That Seafood Watch rating is suspect at best. The problem is that it does not make a distinction between the various runs and the origins of the fish caught. Some places have very healthy, and heavily harvested, runs of certain fish while having very unhealthy runs of other fish. A prime example is the Kenai and Cook Inlet kings. They harvest the living $hit out of the abundant sockeye. In the process, they have harvested the $hit out of the not so healthy kings. Now, there are giant areas being closed to king fishing and some of the worst runs on record are occuring now. These fish harvested by Alaskan commercials. It ain't the Indians and Japanese. Similar harvest occurs on our Washington fish by Alaskan commercials.