Well Mr. Paker, color me slow on the uptake since I didn't get all that from your reference to ". . . the ascot wearing Salmos of the world . . . "

You'll get no argument from me that the recreational angling community as a whole does nothing as WDFW steadily chips away at sport fishing opportunity. Except for me and a few other like-minded souls who contact WDFW and testify at WDFW Commission meetings to point out how the Department bites the very hand that feeds it. Part of how they do it successfully is by the incremental approach, closing a small niche here and one there, and by veiling closures under the false cloak of "conservation" when it's been shown to them that is provably not the case. Yet they keep chipping away.

Restrictions on fishing, per se, are not a problem nor THE problem. Absent restrictions we, as in all fishers, would fish every valuable stock to obliteration. Fisheries management, by its very definition, is the process of imposing a variety of restrictions on fishing. Some restrictions serve conservation purposes; others serve social purposes - liking spreading out the available catch among more citizens and license buyers. There's nothing wrong nor unseemly about that.

Steelhead populations continue to dwindle, but it is for reasons other than fishing in almost every case. Since fishing is not the proximate cause of steelhead population decline, it is nonsense to say that fishermen who care about wild steelhead should just stop fishing for them. And if fishermen stop fishing for steelhead and divert their attention to golf or tennis, who is going to advocate for wild steelhead? You may not have noticed, but I have; people who don't fish don't advocate for fish conservation. Most fishermen don't either, but that's a related buy separate point.

It really sounds like you're saying is that if steelhead fishing is so messed up that Paker can't fish the way Paker chooses to fish (from a boat with a guide), then it is time to close it all down, tribes included. You know enough to know how foolish that last part is. By federal treaty right, tribes will still be fishing for whatever is left long after the last sport fishing opportunity has been closed. That is settled case law. Your position looks to me a lot like the official position the Wildcat Steelhead Club took regarding the Skagit. They opposed the CNR special regs season that began for wild steelhead in 1981. Their view was (maybe still is) that unless the run could support a two wild steelhead harvest per angler per day, then the river should be closed to all fishing. Their way, or no way. You sound remarkably similar. The Wildcatters would forgo a whole lotta' sportfishing opportunity with their narrow steelhead world view.

In the present case of this season on the coast, WDFW said their objective is to reduce sport fishing encounters with wild steelhead. That is - reduce - not eliminate, which you would choose if you can't encounter them your preferred way. I posted previously that I read that something like 70% of the coastal steelhead encounters are by anglers fishing from boats. And a large proportion of that is from guide boats. Can you please name one action, other than complete closures, that does as much to reduce angling encounters with wild steelhead?

Steelhead runs are not healthy. And this regulation won't make them healthier, at least not by statistical significance. However, by reducing encounters and their associated incidental mortality (conservatively calculated at 10% but more likely in the 4 - 5% range), it's realistically possible that significantly more steelhead will survive to spawn in 2021.