Just to add some clarity since I'm the author of the linked page:

1. The numbers all come from the WDFW report titled "Stock Status and Harvest Management Plan For Steelhead Returning to the Chehalis River In the Winter of 2021-22"

2. It's not clear to me whether wild caught from sport fisherman is caught / kept vs encountered...I assumed in the article that these "wild caught steelhead" were illegally bonked fish not "encounters" as that would seem an impossible number as some have pointed out here.

3. The hypothetical December lower only scenario in the article uses estimated run sizes between hatchery and wild fish, and hatchery catch data to estimate "encounters". Because these are in-basin hatchery stocks and return timing is assumed to be the same, over time the ratio of encounters should match the ratio of run size...and we know the amount of hatchery steelhead caught, so it's a simple cross-multiply operation to get the number of wild encounters...

Hope this adds clarity. Thanks for the feedback on the article!