On the other hand, you take programs like the Wenatchee and Methow...the fish were severely depressed, listed on the ESA, and they closed them to steelhead fishing altogether.

They implemented a rescue program, used locally adapted fish in the hatchery, and raised and released them...and several generations later had enough wild fish returning to not only re-open the rivers, but to require harvesting excess hatchery fish so that the now-adapted runs could spawn in the river without them.

Clear goal...more wild fish spawning. Goal accomplished...and then we got to fish.

Like all wild runs, those stocks have been up and down with numbers, and we don't fish every year, but we do get to fish again on stocks that were down to handfuls of fish.

Fish on...

Todd