Let me type this slow so that it is clearly understood. Select Washington Indian tribes have fishing rights that are part of FEDERAL treaties between the U.S. government and individual tribes. The members of those tribes have RIGHTS to fish; if you are not a member of a treaty tribe, you do not. Those treaty rights were defined functionally by the Boldt decision (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boldt_Decision for a brief review) in 1974 to mean that the tribes can harvest half the available fish and shellfish. Washington state has NO ability to restrict fishing by the tribes (some similar decisions in Oregon); Washington state has gotten its *$&$(#^ handed to it in federal court multiple times since the Boldt decision. The federal courts have decreed that both WA DFW and the tribes are co-managers of these resources. Some amount of harvest horse-trading goes on between DFW and the tribes at the North of Falcon process (wdfw.wa.gov/fish/northfalcon/faq.htm), but I expect not much trust. The co-managers do have areas of conflict in the acceptable sustainable harvest on specific river systems and specific stocks; the tribes biologists and the states biologists disagree. If you think that the CCA has the ability to change a FEDERAL treaty, I have some bank stocks that I think you might be interested in.
The tribes are a heterogeneous mix. Some work cooperatively with other tribes and the wider society, others have historical emnity against non-native society and even other tribes. Some tribes are well-managed, others are kleptocracies. The tribes hire their own biologists, manage their own hatcheries, and govern the activities (kind of....) of their members. However, there is often considerable overlap and conflict among tribes in their "usual and accustomed" fishing areas and each tribe acts independently according to its own perceived best interests.
CCA or other pressure groups might be able to convince Wa State to outlaw the use of gillnets in state waters by non-treaty fishers; the last time that was tried by referendum in 1995, it went down to defeat (Initiative 640: 57.5% against, 42.5% for). Of course, on the Columbia River banning gill nets would mean convincing Oregon state to go along too. And any agreement by Washington and Oregon to limit gill netting would do NOTHING to stop the interception of mixed stocks by sport and commercial fishers in Alaska and B.C.; of course, we never see these fish that are taken off the top of the returns, do we.
At one point, I had some hopes that the pressures of the Endangered Species Act could be a powerful hammer to modify the activities of tribal fishers. However, both the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Fish and Wildlife Service are in the same branch of government, the Department of the Interior, and the same lawyers work for both. You cannot use the same lawyers as plaintiff and defendant. If an outside group were to sue to enforce the Endangered Species Act, it is likely that a complete end to fishing on endangered stocks would be implemented against non-treaty commercial and sports fishers before the RIGHTS of the tribes were suspended. (And I'm not that sure that a treaty wouldn't trump a law. I'm not a lawyer, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn once).
A possible lever to influence the activities of the tribes may be through the Federal appropriations process for other tribal activities. While some tribes are flush with casino funds, others are still dependent of federal funds for a variety of activities on their reservations. This means using carrots (dollars) rather than a stick (regulations). This will require trust, something in very short supply when discussing fishing allocations.
Steve