My concern about getting new participants is, with fishing, the emphasis on boats. Personally, I have ever been much of a boat fisherman. Most of it is boring, plus there is seasickness. WA has a lot of great fisheries but they are almost all boat-based; ocean salmon, PS salmon, OD lakes, walleye, kokanee, drift boat steelhead, and so on.

Who is going to start out, from ground zero, if you need a boat?

As to the mindset of WDFW, when I started out things like "Opening Day" were a "Really Big Deal". Not only was there a lot of press, press releases, and news clips but on OD much of the staff was out at the lakes doing creek checks, which were duly reported in the papers. This staff was office staff, bios, administrators, and so on because it was recognized that the agency ran on license sales and this event was one of the big sellers. I'm pretty sure that few in upper echelons do OD checks any more; just another disconnect from the stakeholders.