OP steelhead appear to be "more likely than not" headed for an ESA listing. Unlike PS, I expect that the coastal tribes may push back harder at NMFS to avoid the listing because they do target harvest of wild steelhead. The PS tribes focused their steelhead harvests on hatchery fish. The listing has had less of an effect on PS treaty fishing in general.

If listed, I expect nothing less than the highest quality lip service given to OP steelhead recovery, because that is what the fishery agencies do. Measures that might actually move the needle forward toward recovery impose too severe of social and economic impacts that are not acceptable to society at large. So many consultations will be held, and many biological opinions will be written that conclude with "non-jeopardy" determinations while the populations continue to decline. At least we will provide the cover of saying, "Hey, we gave it the good old college try."

Recreational fishing will be even more restricted than it is now, if PS is an example. Curtailing fishing is simply the low hanging fruit. It won't matter. I've written before that fishing is not the proximate cause of the declining steelhead populations in WA. To be sure, fishing has contributed to steelhead population abundance in the past, but not in recent years (with a few previously noted possible exceptions). I'll allege again that if zero steelhead fishing had occurred on WA origin steelhead anywhere since 1980, the run sizes would be pretty much the same as we are observing in these most recent years. Because recreational fishing regulations have become sufficiently protective to ensure that spawning escapements have been sufficient to seed freshwater habitat to its contemporary carrying capacity, strange as that would seem in many cases. Again, that is because fishing, as visible and easy to blame as it is, isn't the limiting factor for wild steelhead population abundance.