WDFW/ODFW bast#$&%

[Pirate]

Help me understand this sudden closure of Buoy 10, when earlier figures posted had the catch at 3200 and now they are at the 9000 Chinook quota???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What calculator are they using?????
I was there last weekend and it wasn't good!!!!
I have planned the better part of next week in a motel in Astoria, but now feel like cancelling. Unfortunately the motels and restaurants get to share my pain, but maybe they will have more influence with the agencies.
I feel like Michael Douglas in "Falling Down"

------------------
B

[newt]

A quote from our beloved WDFW:

"We're happy we have been able to provide a good season for people fishing at Buoy 10," said Bill Tweit WDFW Columbia River Policy Coordinator. "In fact, it's been the best season in several years, and with the coho season continuing there are plenty of fishing opportunities throughout the fall."

Best season in several years? Quota reached by this weekend for kings?

The fishing has been lukewarm from the get-go. What are these guys on? Bend over everyone!

[finclipped]

Just a reminder that ODFW and WDFW were the one's fighting for sports anglers when the tribal/nontribal allocations were being set earlier this year.

I am also disappointed in the closure, but the one fish limit kept it open longer than it would have other wise been left open. It is simply the ODFW and WDFW who must carry out the closure announcement. Get down there before it closes, we caught Chinook limits both Monday and Tuesday.

[Pete]

There is no reasonable possibility that 5800 chinook will be caught in the estuary this week. Only 3200 were caught in the first three weeks of the season and the catch rate has not improved. The only explanation I can fathom is that the sport catch includes commercial gill net sport fishing. It's time for the DFWs to improve their counting and reporting methodologies.

[TheRogue]

I generally don't like to get involved in this type of bashing....it doesn't do any good.

However, did you see that we (The U.S. government) just officially apologized to the indigenous Hawaiian peoples for actions that were taken 100 years ago!!

I'm apologizing to the fishes of the Earth's waters for man inventing the hook, oh, say 10000 years ago.

Boy, I feel better.

T.R.

[Nanook]

The official version. Wonder how long upriver
will last now? "Git offa my river," grin.

Date: August 23, 2000

Chinook Angling Open at Buoy 10 Through Sunday

Coho Angling Remains Open Until Dec. 31

PORTLAND — Anglers may keep chinook caught in the Buoy 10 sport fishery through Sunday evening, but starting Monday, Aug. 28 they may only keep coho salmon and steelhead.

Columbia River fishery managers from Oregon and Washington decided Wednesday afternoon that the Buoy 10 chinook fishery must close because a 9,000 chinook quota will likely be reached after this weekend’s catch. Anglers may continue to keep coho salmon caught in the popular fishery at the mouth of the Columbia River. In addition, both chinook and coho may be kept in the mainstem Columbia River upstream of Tongue Point, Oregon.

Oregon and Washington biologists will reassess the chinook catch from Buoy 10 next week and determine if the fishery could be reopened for chinook retention in early September.

Biologists predict the coho harvest at Buoy 10 will increase next week when the fishing effort shifts to angling for hatchery coho instead of chinook. More than 400,000 adipose fin-clipped coho are predicted to return to the Columbia River this year.

Chinook fishing in the mainstem Columbia above Tongue Point will continue to improve next week as the fish move upstream. Good chinook catches are already occurring in many areas between Tongue Point and Bonneville Dam.

Anglers should consult the 2000 Oregon Sport Fishing Regulations for catch limits and other restrictions.

[Phish_on]

Just because this seems to be a good year, doesn't mean the salmon crisis is over. I'm willing to put up with restrictions if theres any hope that we can still catch fish 20 years from now.

But then, I happen to get a thrill from releasing fish. On the other hand, if I get any keepers this weekend - BONK BONK ON THE HEAD! So it goes ...

I strongly suspect we'll get a few more days after Labor Day.

[Pilar]

OOh boy! My B.S. meter is pegging out. I just love it when I detect doublespeak. That blurb from Bill Tweit was loaded with it. "We are happy to PROVIDE..." Any time you see words like that in a statement from a bureaucrat, hang on to your wallet. After the job justification they'll be wanting more $$ for what they are "providing".

The implication is that the money you pay the government (taxes, license fees etc..)will be returned to you in some way (IE: more fish to catch). I can't see any connection between bureaucrats trying to justify their existence and the improving ocean conditions and anadromous fish returns. Except that they would like to claim some credit for it. Only the big guy in the sky deserves any credit.....

The last guy I knew of who thought he was GOD was Hyman G. Rickover. He was an arrogant Navy S.O.B. to say the least. He used to say that although he was not GOD he was qualified to stand GOD's watch....

The fishing is better because the Ocean is better. That these bureaucrats even attempt to take credit for the ocean, it's welfare or the condition of fish stocks is pitiful.
They sure won't be there to take the blame when the fish stocks are down.

The other part of this that stinks is that the tribal interests get a disproportionate number of the fish (50%?). Correct me if I'm wrong on that percentage but it's something like that. On what is that split based? Can a small group of people claim minority status and then beat the rest of us over the head with it? In America the answer is yes! If your ancestors were used for farm machinery or were driven off their land long ago, you're in!

It doesn't make sense to allocate resources based on some misguided sense of guilt for things that happened long ago. And it doesn't make sense to let the hatchery fish return to their source to be clubbed and backhoed into the ground.

The bend is your friend!

[Deleted User]

Pilar, backtrack thru a few pages of the BB forum here and read posts concerning Columbia R. fish allocation, under various associated subject headings. You will find that fish deemed harvestable by the Treaties, and Fed. court interpretations of them, were to be split 50/50 between Tribal fishers and non-Indian fishers. However, the Indians have gained much more than a 50% allocation of the fish via the NMFS, and complicated gross misinterpretations of the Fed. ESA guideline issues. It is so discustingly unfair that the states of OR & WA dept.'s of fishreies have had to sue the "Unfair Pair" just to have a season for sportfishers this fall!!! And that was on the heels of the Indians getting ALL of the excess hatchery mainstem Col. springers this year! This fiasco will be ongoing for quite some time thru the courts again. It's a rediculous outrage of them getting fish, that we paid for, way above the 50% guideline rulings. And getting away with it due to such reasonings as "the Indians didn't build the fish killing dams". Well a heck of a lot of us sportfishers, and our ancestors, didn't either!!! We just use some of the electricity like the Indians do. It's hard to believe the lack of intelligent thought, proper due process, and reverse discrimination that is coming out of politicos in Wash. D.C.! - RT

[Pilar]

RT, I've seen some of this stuff on your board. I'll look through the rest of it. It's hard to cull out the facts though. A question for you RT. Do the sport fishers have any input to the allocation percentages? If so, what is the forum and where and when does this occur?

Most of the battle with bureaucrats is to get your point of view heard and` acknowledged as valid. One way to do this is to apply for "victim" status. Hmmmm.. perhaps honest fishers are a minority and can apply for special consideration based on that. The bend is your friend!

[Crusty]

I just posted this on Bob's board. It applies here also.Come on guys, you all have been beating a dead horse since I have been on this board.
Take it from a retired bureaucrat, you will NEVER make a change until you show united political muscle. Everything you have put to a vote has lost at the polls. Politicians who thumb their noises at you are re-elected. ***** all you want, but until the polls are afraid of you, YOU WILL GET NOTHING. "Fairness" is not an operative word in politics, "Expediency" is.

Get it together or learn to live with it.

And Pilar, leave my buddy Rickover alone http://www.ifish.net/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif.

Crusty (ex-USN, SS)

[Deleted User]

Pilar, the forums for sportfishers to be heard are few and lack effectiveness because they usually lack the numbers. Collectively, sportfishers are notorious for appathetic laziness when it comes to doing something other than just complain. There are public meetings held throughout the state by such as the ODFW concerning reg changes and season considerations. Most fishers seem to think they are mostly just a PR show and that they already have their minds made up about these issues. Maybe, maybe not, but I still think we should show in good numbers when our sport is at stake! Other forums include media such as the Oregonian, STS mag, and net fishing forums like our BB here. The more opinions that get expressed the more notice we can garner. There are members of the ODFW and WDFW that I know read our BB. A couple of them are fish biologists registered as members here. Letter write-ins to key people at the ODFW and to state rep.'s can be very helpful toward our causes, again if in great numbers. We now have hundreds of Ifish members; and readers (that don't register) number in the thousands. Jen has put up a page of key places to send letters. If there is a good cause, publicize it here for reader response and it could help get things swung our way. But guys have to get over the heavy @$$ syndrome to just lay on the couch or go sit in their boat instead of show up in big numbers at rally causes. Until we collectively get over that attitude our weakness will be exploited. That's why the Indians get more than their 50% allotment of NW fish harvests. The cliche' "The sqeakiest wheel gets the grease" does apply. Every single fisher needs to chuck the 'tude that either "I'll let others show up while I sit" or "it won't get us anywhere". Once that occurs we could accomplish much more than people think! - RT - Edited http://www.ifish.net/forum/images/graemlins/shocked.gif http://www.ifish.net/forum/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif http://www.ifish.net/forum/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[This message has been edited by RT (edited 08-25-2000).]

[Pilar]

Ping......... Crusty that was a transient and I now know your position! You couldn't possibly be a nuke or you would have a special place in your heart for Hymie as I do. One ORSE was all I needed to figure it out.

Your attitude as a 'retired' bureaucrat is pretty typical of those still in the game. Anonymous and therefore beyond reach.

You are correct however. There are many who can define the problems, Ad nauseum, Ad infinitim. Few ever figure out how to solve them. So I will refrain from venting and start writing letters. Thanks for the addresses Jen and RT!

(FTN)^2 "Free the nukes from the Navy". (Ex USN, EM2/SS). The bend is your friend!

[Ramstrong]

Oh no, We're being overrun by bubble heads. http://www.ifish.net/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif What is this world coming to. You guys must have really been bugged by the Oscar II incident recently. We were playing cat and mouse with an Oscar II on my last westpac. Very unfortunate situation in the Russian Navy.

-Former IS2 Armstrong

[Nanook]

I KNEW it! A BUNCH of former squids! (Even
though the skimmers really rule - grin)
Best to you all. Former RMC USN.

******

[Pilar]

Two kinds of things that float, boats and targets. One is designed to sink and one is not. Think about it!

Yes very unfortunate for the guys on the "Kursk". As I have said elsewhere they died alone at the bottom of the Barents Sea. They were serving their country at the whim of the "needs of their Navy". As some of us have evidently done.

Defending your country and in America rights of free speech, freedom of assembly and whatever is/was no laughing matter. A moment of silence observed for brave young men who died in military service of whatever country is appropriate for those so inclined. The bend is your friend!

[Katchun Release]

Hey, I know this is a long post, but for those of you discouraged (as I am) with indian's treaty right allocations, the following article may buoy your spirits. If you're interested in the salmon dilemma, a great newsletter to subscribe to, which reports newspapers articles from around the country each week, is:

Dan Skinner
Conservation Associate
Idaho Rivers United
ph (208) 343-7481
fax (208) 343-9376
dskinner@idahorivers.org http://www.idahorivers.org


The Salmon are Sovereign!
BY: Paul VanDevelder

On March 9, the environmental group American Rivers challenged the US
government to breach four dams on Washington's Snake River -- Ice
Harbor,
Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Lower Granite -- to save the river's
endangered salmon. "We are here to warn America that delay means
extinction," the environmentalists stated. "These wild salmon are a
national
icon, but they could soon go the way of the buffalo."

In his dramatic endorsement of breaching the dams, Oregon Governor John
Kitzhaber stands alone in acknowledging that what anyone might think
about
the dams is ultimately irrelevant. The multi-billion dollar question is
not
"To breach or not to breach?" but rather, "How many salmon will be left
when
the dams come down?"

Despite howls of protests, the breaching solution to restoring
anadramous
fish stocks to the Pacific Northwest may be a lot closer to a reality
than
people are willing to think. While economics are compelling, they pale
when
measured against the power of a treaty.

No elected representatives in the Northwest wield more political power
than
the region's four governors. That said, no one wields more legal power
than
the four Columbia River Indian tribes -- Nez Perce, Umatilla, Yakima and

Warm Springs. And when push comes to shove, the difference between
political
power and legal power will be the difference between a slingshot and a
tank.


When a delegation representing the five tribes met with White House
officials in March, everyone sitting around that table understood who
held
the aces and face cards. The tribes have the treaties and they have
vowed to
take any action necessary to save the salmon from extinction. They
intend to
make it stick.

The tribes did not create this crisis: It is the mismanaged consequence
of a
political economy pursued with blind zeal by the immigrant society that
colonized the Northwest 150 years ago. The $ 3.5 billion spent to watch
native runs dwindle from 500,000 spring chin-nook to fewer than 50,000
in
just ten years has been an exercise in futility The tribes are saying:
"No
more!"

States seldom prevail when they challenge Indian treaty rights. In 1999,

Minnesota spent $ 6 million on legal fees only to get a jarring wake-up
call
when the US Supreme Court upheld Chippewa "usufructuary rights" on
10,000
square miles of their ancestral ground. Two weeks later, the same court
upheld the treaty rights of 17 Puget Sound tribes that had sued for
access
to their treaty-protected shellfish beds. Private landowners were
furious,
but they only had themselves to blame: They had trusted politicians who
issued promises they had no power to keep.

These cases enforced the same class of rights protecting salmon in the
Columbia River watershed that were first stipulated in the 1855
treaties.
Those treaties have been giving state governments fits for more than a
century.

The inviolability of those treaties has been upheld by the US Supreme
Court
at least six times. They are a legal bulwark written on parchment that
will
prove far more enduring than the concrete buttresses supporting the
Snake
River dams.

Governor Kitzhaber's dam-busting endorsement recognized that the
survival of
the salmon is more important to the long-term health of the region than
wheat. The 1855 treaties guarantee the tribes salmon and the
Constitution
(Article VI, Clause 2) protects those guarantees as "the supreme law of
the
land." Dams cannot remain without profoundly undermining the US
Constitution.

This legal landscape was illuminated by US Circuit Judge Noel P. Fox in
a
landmark 1979 ruling pitting the Mille Lacs band of Chippewa against the

state of Michigan: "the mere passage of time ... cannot erode the rights

guaranteed by solemn treaties that both sides pledged on their honor to
uphold.... The Indians [treaty] rights are preserved and protected under
the
supreme law of the land, do not depend on State law, and are distinct
from
the rights and privileges held by non-Indians and may not be qualified
by an
action of the state."

For some non-Indians in Montana, Idaho, Minnesota, Washington State, and

Oregon, this may be a bitter pill, but it is a pill shaped from the
foundational law that established the American republic. If non-Indian
citizens are poorly educated about the special status of
government-to-government relationships between whites and tribal
governments, the tribes can hardly be held liable for failing to
discharge a
burden that was never theirs to begin with.

The controversy over the dams is a highly charged thunderhead, but the
storm
lurking behind it will set the tone for the 21st century. Huge battles
loom
over treaty-protected water, timber, salmon, land, gold, copper, zinc,
oil
and gas, uranium, coal, and management of the Columbia, Colorado, and
Missouri Rivers.

"We slaughtered millions of these people, who were supposed to be
protected
by the 'supreme law of the land'," says constitutional law scholar Ron
Manuto. "We stole the whole continent and declared the frontier
conquered.
You don't pay those kinds of debts with capital. You pay with karma."

Recent legal opinions have signaled a dramatic return to the principles
established 180 years ago by the great Chief Justice John Marshall.
These
principles, known in the federal judiciary as the "foundational
principles
of Indian law," establish the legal power of Indian treaties a solid
notch
above the power of statehood. The growing body of case law is
impressive.

* December 1997: The Supreme Court enforced Isleta Pueblo water-quality
standards on the Rio Grande River, standards that cost the city of
Albuquerque $ 400 million in capital improvements. The Isleta
combined,their
First Amendment freedom of religion with treaty rights in an argument
that
had never before been heard in a court of law.

* October 1998: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals did the same thing
for
the Salish and Kootenai tribe of Western Montana. Montana Gov. Marc
Racicot
promised to fight it out at the Supreme Court. He did. He lost.

* September 1998: Federal Court Judge Lawrence Piersol "dismissed with
prejudice" the claims of South Dakota Governor William Janklow and
restored
360,000 acres of South Dakota prairie to the Yankton Sioux tribe, ending
a
century-long battle over a treaty signed in 1858.

* May 1999: A federal court in Milwaukee threw out Governor Tommy
Thompson's
case against Chippewa (Ojibwa) water quality standards on summary
judgement,
a decision that ended of a 20-year stalemate with Exxon over the opening
of
a copper mine at Crandon Lake, Wisconsin.

The visible battles may focus on dams, clams, or salmon, but the
underlying
war is about power. In a battle between political expedience and
foundational law, the battle is no contest. In Puget Sound, on the
boundary
waters of Minnesota, and along the Snake River, the future is in the
hands
of the tribes and the courts -- not, thankfully, in the hands of
politicians. http://www.ifish.net/forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Paul VanDevelder's reports on natural resource issues have appeared in
Harper's, Smithsonian and News Watch. A longer version of this article
originally appeared in the Seattle Times.

Katchun

[Trick]

I've read some very excellent posts and while sitting here I get this ill feeling after realizing the lopsided amount of power that the tribes carry in their favor. I hope that what is being said here spurs others to become more involved in future meetings and votes that affect our industry. After reading the first post and seeing how many high profile losses were dealt to elected officials from various states, I wonder if any power can be pulled away when the courts seem to lean towards the tribal interest? From the begining of time human groups (tribes) upto and including countries have gone to war over natural resources, land, religous beliefs, etc. and in this basic human behavior, there are winners and losers. When we were busy removing land from Mexico a few years back, I don't remember any treaties that were signed with the mexicans over lost land and lives? Maybe we should fire the border patrol and give the southwestern states back? We need not feel guilt for what occurred at the hands of past generations and trust me when I say that North America was ripe for the taking and there were several countries that were staking claim to the lands here like the French on the West Coast. It is unfortunate that the people that inhabited this land were not more advanced and better at defending themselves against their attackers, but we can't undo what's been done. Let's pull together and show everyone what were made of. Something has to change. Sorry about dragging this out, I get ****** off sometimes.