End net fishing on Skagit River

The article on steelhead fishing in the Skagit Valley Herald on Jan. 18 had no mention of the weekly gill netting by State and tribe research vessels on the lower North fork of the Skagit River. This fishing is done whenever the powers that be decide to do so.

All of the salmon and steelhead caught during this research are given to the tribes and the numbers are reported to the Fishery Dept. the same day the fish are caught. That same information is kept from the public by the Fishery Dept., who have told me that that info won’t be compiled until year’s end and to call back then.

This procedure has gone on for years and years without the knowledge of the general public.

If 5,000 steelhead are expected to return, the state uses that as an excuse to turn the tribal nets loose to harvest 250 fish when in actuality that many have probably already been devoured from the research endeavors.

The state should be mandated to make public the weekly catch by research vessel with the threat of jail time for manipulating the numbers.

The state assumes the 250 fish out of 2,500 will die after being played on a hook and line by a non-Indian.

To start with, where did they get the 2,500 number from?

All I know is God help the poor Norwegian who gets caught with a mouthful of one of the dead ones – there goes his boat, truck and boat trailer. (State vs. Hildebrand, 2003).

A book printed by the Dept. of Fisheries titled “Fisheries Statistical Report” shows that in less than seven cycles of Skagit Bay and Skagit River King salmon (Chinooks), Indian gill netted and trapped, then sold to commercial buyers, 644,794 adult King salmon, reducing the most productive river in the United States to the nothing it is today.

No river the size of the Skagit can sustain itself with net fishing and until it’s completely outlawed and all fishermen fish with hook and line in terminal waters for every species, there will be no recovery.

Article 5 of the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855 had it right, when it said Indians had the right to fish in common with all citizens of the territory.

It didn’t say they could gill net and sell or eat while the rest of us could catch and release.

Denny Sather