While the cormorants do eat trout, the primary reason for going to legals instead of fingerlings was spiny-rays. WDFW lost the ability to rehab lakes as they had in the past. Having competitive species in the lake gets the fingerlings eaten. Also, as I said while the corms eat trout, they tend to be on the lakes with spiny rays and then switch to easier to swallow fish when they get stocked.

I know that at least some of WDFW area bios worked really hard to get good lowland lake fisheries and put a lot of effort into what to stock and when. This is probably not an agency wide view, but some were/are working hard at it.

As to searuns, you could have a harvest in salt with about a 16" minimum as this is the size that allows all the fish to spawn once. Because of the two groups of cutts (early-primarily river and late-primarily creek) you need to protect the creek fish in salt as they are spawners to 16". The river fish, since they enter earlier, spawn successfully with a 14" minimum.
It should be noted that about the only anadromous salmonids in WA that have shown strong recovery are the cutts and char. And we don't kill them. Even with the **cked up fw and marine habitat, they increase when we don't kill them.

It's not, to my knowledge, WDFW's fault that Lake WA spiny rays accumulate toxins. That's DOE's bailiwick; talk to them.