Repeat females spawners can be important to population stability in at least part because those repeat spawners tend to have significantly more eggs than the first time they spawned. Have noted that as marine survival declines the portion of a returning steelhead population average age declines. See fewer fish with longer periods of marine rearing; the portion of say 3-salt fish decline. It may be the case that that elevated mortality continues in at least some degree the entire time the fish are at see.

Let's look what a repeat spawner rate of say 75% really means. It means that the productivity of the population is so low that it takes 4 spawners to produce one fish the next generation. What one typically sees as one moves to the north fringe of the steelhead range we see increasing rates of repeat spawners. Move beyond that extreme range of steelhead; say northern Alaska or eastern Kamchatka the O. mykiss no longer express the anadromous life history - only find resident rainbows.

From what we know of the biology of O. mykiss as the productivity of rivers have declined the resident life history likely becomes more important. I would argue that for most of the Puget Sound rivers the combination of freshwater habitat loss and poor marine survival has driven the over-all productivity to where continuing presences of O. mykiss maintaining the resident life history is essential. In effect the productivity of those waters has been driven below that which supports anadromy - much like those waters beyond the extremes of steelhead distribution.

To that point it should be obvious that a significant management paradigm is needed to encourage the expansion of the resident rainbow populations in our rivers. That change requires total bait bans (selective gear rules) to reduce incidental hooking impacts as well zero bag limits every where in the anadromous zones. That sort has been a difficult sell to both WDFW and the angling public.

Curt