Washington Trout declares war on recreational fishing: Steelheader.net- Steelhead, Salmon and trout fishing

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

After my last response on this thread I went on vacation for a few days...and came home yesterday to find it to be full of good ideas, bad ideas, name calling, "calling out" of the secret conspirators [Roll Eyes]

, re-explanations of previous assertions, additional responses to those re-explanations...and most of the UBB graemlins going from flames and frowns to smilies and winks.

Pretty much a microcosm of how the various beliefs, values, views, and knowledge bases of all of us fishermen come together on controversial issues that involve our shared passion of fishing.

For all the problems and arguments that it causes sometimes, most of it I wouldn't trade for a calmer discussion (I would trade the obvious character attacks, responses based only on emotion, and contributions from individuals that only involve heated responses rather than any constructive information or questions). This forum, and others like it (see the 3 page thread on this topic on PP), represent the greatest amount of current information about fishing and our fisheries, and also provides a great place to learn from and educate each other.

That being said, now I'll try to respond to all the stuff above in this thread...if I leave something out that I should have responded to, let me know...there's a lot there!

First, my affilliation with Washington Trout can be easily outlined: There is none, at least officially. I'm not even a general member, much less a person with any official standing. I do know a few general members, and a couple of the staff. That's pretty much it. I don't presume to speak for them, on this or any other issue. Unless I were to state otherwise, I speak only for myself...

In this thread all I intend to do is share some of the things I have learned over my years as a marine biologist, environmental attorney, Wild Steelhead Coalition board member...and last, but not least, my 25 years of steelhead fishing.

Quillback, I agree that fisheries management should not be put in the hands of federal judges. The only way to avoid that is to have meaningful negotiation between the various factions and lawful operations by the agency fish managers. If there is nothing illegal going on, then the lawsuit will go nowhere. If there is...well, illegal is illegal. That's why we have courts.

Additionally, though not really relevant to this topic except for the idea to keep judges out of fish management, your criticism of the Boldt decision is unfounded. I wish it had never come about, I'm still disappointed in the outcome, and it created gigantic management issues for state, tribal, and federal managers to overcome. However, whatever our opinions are regarding the outcome, it is not just the product of a senile old man. At least twenty other federal judges, all the way up to the Supreme Court, reviewed it and found it extremely well-reasoned and well-written. It is presented in law school textbooks next to cases about desegregation as one of the hallmarks of American civil rights case law.

If you need someone to blame for the decision, blame greedy commercial fishermen, blatantly racist rednecks, overzealous politicians (read "Slade Gorton"), and a stubborn state that refused to follow much less stringent guidelines for several years until the court finally said "enough is enough". Don't forget, before the decision 3% of the population was taking 7% of the fish. When the state tried to take that away, the eventual outcome was the 50/50 split.

Eric, you're right about the simplicity of the solutions being completely overwhelmed by the political nature of enacting them.

Mike, I think that questioning the motivation behind actions is very important. When PETA and various other militant whacks pushed through the trapping ban, it was not because of individual trap types that were hurting individual types of animals or depleting species in a certain way. It was a backward attempt to put a dent in the fur trade (If you can't trap 'em, you can't sell 'em). Is this WT action an attempt to bring 18 hatcheries into compliance, or an attempt to start ending hatchery operations in general?

Whatever the motive is, compliance would end both the lawsuit and the attempt to end hatchery operations, if that indeed is the motive.

QB, I didn't mean to imply that the state would find more money to fix the hatcheries up and to bring them into compliance, or that it would be reallocated from somewhere else to fix them. They may have to close some, and that would take a chunk out of our fishing opportunities, and those of the tribes and commercials, too. As I noted above, however, the law is the law...and they're either in compliance or they're not. If this thread was about WT suing a timber company because of its operations, we'd likely to be quicker to agree that they need to either fix their operations or shut it down.

Again, I'd rather see the limited money go to ten legal and productive hatcheries rather than to eighteen illegal and less productive hatcheries.

4S, the ESA is federal legislation, and it would likely be litigated in federal court, and the feds would not have to consider whether or not its mandates are affordable or not. Back when the spotted owl cases were running through the courts, the states' argued that they didn't have the resources to conduct all the studies in the time allotted. The court ruled that lack of $$ is not an excuse for illegal activity. That's a good thing, too, because enforcement of environmental laws has become a driving force in the development of newer technologies to control all types of pollution.

boater, I have no idea what they do with the chinook at the Tokul diversion dam, or why they'd do it.

Gooose, I have a hard time figuring what my ideals have to do with any of this discussion. While I appreciate your concern with downstream conditions, including overharvest, being just as, if not more, important than a small diversion dam upstream, the concern can be expressed the other way just as easily. Why reduce commercial harvest when the spawning area can only support a limited amount of spawners, anyway?

It's the classic stand in a circle, turn to the right, and point a finger argument. The commercials point to dams, the dam operators point at sportsfishermen, who blame it on the tribes, who blame it on developers destroying habitat, who point to the commercials and say that we don't need the habitat if there aren't enough fish left to use it.

And everyone of those groups continues to harvest fish or damage necessary habitat, because it's not their fault.

Which group's pseudo-science are you referring to?

Marsha, you're certainly right about what may happen if this does indeed end up in court. The law is indeed a fickle thing! This type of issue would bring together a great many seemingly incompatible groups (tribes, commercials, sporties, the state)and those types of coalitions are generally hard to beat. Your point that the burden is on WT to prove their case is indeed important.

Lastly, this incorporates the great majority of all the comments we have made in this thread. We all have personal agendas, we all have different means available to further them, and we all think ours is the most important.

We here on this board have a shared agenda of lots of fishing and lots of fish. However, we all have different definitions of what "lots of fishing" and "lots of fish" means.

Commercials have money in mind, and our insistence on "playing with our food" is a bit of a burr in their saddle.

Tribes have money and culture in mind...

PETA doesn't want to see any animals killed by anyone (but don't mind brutally decapitating innocent lettuce heads, as long as the bugs living on them haven't been killed by any chemicals).

Etc., etc., etc...

Let's all remember that on a scale of 1-100, with developers one end and PETA on the other, almost all of our opinions as recreational fishermen, no matter how different they seem, all fall between about 63 and 65. That's a tremendous amount of power that is not used very well.

All sport fishermen should give back to the resource what they have received. Join the Recreational Fishing Alliance, the Wild Steelhead Coalition, the Puget Sound Anglers, Trout Unlimited, etc., and support the fish and the fisheries with time, money, and effort. Then encourage all of those types of groups to work together to protect our #63-#65 agendas, rather than divide them all up within those three points and let the other user groups step by us to the front of the line.

Fish on...

Todd

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