President Message
State Board President message for July
With July coming on being the prime start of summer, take time to get with your family and friends to get out on the water. Making memories for your kids and grandkids that
they will never forget is the best thing you can do. We have crabbing opening up, Chinook fishing in some areas, Baker Lake Sockeye, and will have coho fishing coming
a little later too.
These are precious times and we want our kids to understand how blessed our outdoors are. We work very hard on your behalf to keep you on the water. Sometimes our fisheries are very complicated and what you hear on the surface is far from the truth. We are doing everything we can to try to turn around our fisheries. I don’t think
that many fishers agree with hatchery production cuts. It’s our lifeblood. We have to stay vigil and protect them.
We also have to go after salmon predators. This is an ongoing issue we have to get control of. There is movement starting to happen t the federal government level. We
need to make sure that we can deal with them.
There are a lot of fish coming back this year and you need to be planning now on how to access them. We consistently work with tribes to make things better. To date
together, we have removed HSRG from the WDFW Commission Policy, Removed Salmon Policy C-3619 and replaced it with Hatchery Policy C-3624. This was monumental and then we made the first Joint Co-Manager hatchery salmon policy between the state and tribes. This will protect our hatcheries in later years. They are always under attack and we fight to save them.
Go enjoy the summer and get out on the water. Be safe and enjoy the summer. Join and support your local PSA chapter.
· Ron Garner President PSA