What a week.

It's been unusually warm here---as you all know who live here.
February is hit or miss.
This year it's been a hit.
Here is a great picture by Mark of Cannon Beach surf shop.

February---
12 days of good surf.
2 days of kitesurfing.
5 days of pole fishing.
Sunday we begin net fishing.

Can't go on enough about how frustrating the attempted gill net ban is.
A small group of people with money.
That small group has one agenda.
They want all the fish to themselves.
They claim they are innocent.
That their poles and hooks never damage any fish.
I know better.
Any real fisherman knows better.
Their hooks kill.
And there were thousands of wild stock salmon caught with hooks....
thrown into pickups and smuggled home illegally.

The anglers claim they never kill any wild salmon.
BS.
A net catches a salmon.
If it's a wild born salmon (the adipose fin is not clipped off like the hatchery born fish) we can let it go....alive.

The gillnet fishery is a completely sustainable fishery.
The fish are hatched in the hatchery---let go to the ocean---and they return 3 to 7 years later (to die) and we harvest them.

It's amazing.
Beautiful.
Technology cannot compete with nature's ways.
There is still no logical explanation for how the salmon KNOW where to return.
It's nature.

But I can see the greedy television advertisements now.
Saying we are killing whales, dolphins, seals....what a bunch of garbage.
Claiming we hate nature.
Claiming we hate salmon.
Nothing could be further from the truth.

But three men can have a huge voice.
With enough money.
And enough greed in their blood.

Such is this new way of living in 2010.
One person, such as myself, can type words and they are read all around the world.
Ashton Kutcher can have 1,000,000 followers watching him on twitter.
The world has become so small---in so many ways.

Using this fact to their advantage---- two rich guys and a lawyer decide to try and change the Oregon economy and the native Oregonian's way of living.

Walter Fondren (heir to the Exxon fortune...big oil man) and definitely NOT from Oregon.

Loren Parks of Nevada(made millions from a sexual hypnotism scam)

Kevin Mannix (whacko republican attorney)

These three men write up a measure for the citizens to vote on.

They use their money to collect 82,000 signatures.

They recruit sport (pole angler) fisherman.
They convince these fisherman that when the gillnets are gone there will be more fish for the poles to catch.

Even though the Federal government, the state of Oregon, and the state of Washington all watch intensely until too many endangered fish are caught---and then halt ALL fishing.
Even though with no gillnets the EXACT SAME NUMBER of endangered fish will be caught----just by anglers only.


The sportfisherman just don't want to share the sandbox.
Yet the gillnetter has never attacked the sportfisherman.
Even though the sport fishing fleet kills FAR MORE fish than the gillnetters.

The greedy anti group knows the traditional gillnet fisherman doesn't really like sitting in front of computers.
Most are too busy outside fixing nets, their boats, and helping each other work.

So---- it won't be too tough of a fight to beat down the traditional commercial fisherman.

When 82,000 signatures are gathered they throw an issue on the ballot in Oregon.
An issue that is CLEARLY misunderstood by 80% of Oregon.
And the people of Oregon vote.
Portland, Corvallis, Salem, Bend, Junction City, Eugene.
Most of those people have never touched a live salmon.
Most don't even know that the salmon running up the river are running up to spawn and die before we catch them.

Most don't know that 90% of the fish in the river were hatched in a hatchery---paid for by gillnetters and subsidized by the power companies who are paying the gillnetters back from the damage of the dams (which blocked the migration of salmon to their spawning grounds)


If the gillnets are banned ---Oregon will lose another 20 million dollar industry.
Salmon meat was one of the first industries in Oregon.
How sad that these men have such personal interest in destroying so much.

If you vote.

Please vote NO ON 74.

Hundreds of families will thank you that dad still has a job working hard in the river.

These boats are all single manned boats.
Self sufficient one man operations.
Sole proprietorships.
Small businesses in which our country was built on.

Without the salmon industry in the river you will have to buy fish raised in farms.

Salmon which never go to the sea---they are born in a pen and raised there.
Fed by pellets which contain 10 times the cancer causing PCB's of a natural salmon.

Their flesh is then dyed pink to look like it went to the ocean.

You eat that costco farmed salmon---and you are eating a little Red dye number 5.

Farmed fish are the alternative to gillnetting.
And a horrible alternative.

You can bet the anti gillnet campaign won't let the animal rights activists know that farming salmon is the alternative to gillnettting them.

Vote no on 74 and let these special idea money men get on to other things.
Leave our state alone.

Walter Fondren can go back to slinging his oil around bays like he did in the Exxon Valdez spill.
Without commercial fisherman in our river maybe he can mess up our river too---Throw a few liquid natural gas facilities up---which are already being proposed.

With gillnets out of the way he won't have any commercial fisherman to pay off for any damages he causes to the salmon while building those giant facilities on the river banks.

Kevin Mannix can try again for some public office and fail again.

Loren Parks can spend time hypnotizing sexual addicts---and making millions doing so.

And the gillnetters who have fished this river for over 200 years will breathe easy another year.

Until another group decides they want the fish and attacks us again--- next year.