I personally have no moral issue with people casting hookless lures to try and scare up a bite, but there's no question in my mind that it constitutes fishing, albeit extremely ineffective at catching. Even if you don't consider fishing without intentional harvest or hooking "fishing," there should be no question that casting a lure to fish in an attempt to make them bite IS angling, which, like fishing, is prohibited in closed waters.

If WDFW starts making it legal to practice "hookless angling" in closed waters, I'll start tomorrow, but I don't think that's gonna happen, and I can imagine plenty of good reasons why. If people start seeing people casting in closed rivers, some folks are going to assume that means it's open (or recognize how easy it could be to play dumb if caught using hooks), bust out the gear, and hit the river. Enforcement becomes a lot more nuanced and challenging once not everyone carrying a fishing rod on the river can be assumed to be fishing. Even if one person calls ahead and tells the local office they intend to be out casting hookless lures and the office authorizes it, enforcement still needs to respond to reports of illegal fishing (how are they supposed to know it's you someone's reporting?). That could result in a lot of unnecessary waste of the precious few enforcement resources we have, and worse, it could lead to a situation where enforcement stops responding to legitimate poaching reports, assuming everyone with a fishing rod is not using hooks.

Finally, if it's not "fishing," do you still need a fishing license to practice "hookless angling?"

Plenty of slippery slope for WDFW (and citizens) in there, yes?