Well I gotta eat and my eyes ache from spread sheets but just to be a bit of and ass, the best way in a perfect world to put a wild Chinook on the gravel is don't hook them or net them period. That ain't going happen. Hell Doc there a whole bunch of folks that have serous objections to the Johns River fishery because it is a prime Chinook transition area and the release mortality. My response has been and will be that is how REC fishers utilize our limited impacts which includes myself. Which is far better than a kill fishery that others do be it tribal or NT and a dead fish is a dead fish. That some go to the bottom rather than the table is a shame but that is the price we ( and the fish ) pay so we can practice our sport.

CM I do not remember all of it but I remember that the upper Chehalis only ( above Fuller Hill ) pre settler came in at about 180k Coho average run size which shocked all of us. I do remember that you figured biomass of fish and it was just plain huge. Your example for us get a perspective was if you took every hatchery fish carcass that returned to a hatchery in Washington ST and dumped them in the Chehalis for nutrients it would not come close to what nature did pre settler. In fact mile for mile back then no other stream in the state came close for natural Coho.

Doc just because a human touches a Chinook and rears it does not make it inferior. 1 to 1 spawning protocols are adequate and the short rearing time result in a smolt that behaviorally is a little different. When it returns as an adult and spawns its prodigy are 100% the same as those never touched. Now where you are so right is when you then reuse the returning fish several generations without incorporating wild genetics then the genetics drift you are 100% correct. It is all about how you utilize the fish and what is brood.