Bureaucratic numbers of record runs of salmon just do not add up.
They let the public fish all they want in March when there are few to no fish available. April comes and gill nets go in and after that bureaucrats give us a few token days to fish and promptly close the river when the fishing gets good. Then the miracle occurs in May and we have more fish. The Columbia opens again, but you got it, gill nets first, then sportsmen to pick up the crumbs. Big slap in the face to sportsmen who drive millions in tax dollars.
Ask anyone if they witnessed the retention of even 100 fish total this spring and you’ll hear laughter. Yet bureaucrats claim sportsmen caught tens of thousands. Time to report the truth and eliminate the problem. No more gill nets, commercial and tribal. Buy them out. Buy all licenses to gill-netting the Columbia and all off-channel areas, and tell them they are done. The cost to the state will be far less than operating a department they are obviously not capable of running. Tribes receive all the fish they want directly out of the hatchery ponds after they reach the goal for reproduction. No incidental steelhead/sturgeon catch and back to producing great fish runs.
And please stop letting these “no common sense need apply” bureaucrats make decisions with zero accountability.
Troy Cunlisk
Vancouver
