Tug, no worries. Civil debate is a good thing.

The number of spawners a river system needs can be determined through spawner-recruit monitoring. I don't have intimate knowledge of all river basins, but from what I have seen, the WDFW steelhead spawning escapement goals determined in a 1984 exercise, are sufficient to above what is needed to maximize wild steelhead production in each river. That you point to the Queets and Quinault - the rivers I noted as likely exceptions - is noteworthy. The Quinault Tribe and WDFW have different escapement goals for those two rivers, with the Tribal goals being lower. To make that situation worse, IMO, the Tribe adopted a policy that hatchery and wild fish are the same, which science has demonstrated as not being true. I think this leaves those two basins often producing below their carrying capacity.

Meanwhile, with current conditions of low marine survival, greater production of smolts in freshwater can improve adult returns somewhat, but no where near as large as returns of 15 years ago, let alone 30 years ago. Meeting spawning escapement goals would be good, but it would not necessarily translate into productive recreational fishing. Many times over the past 15 to 20 years, steelhead haven't been able to produce even one recruit per spawner, a condition that if repeated consistently, leads to functional extinction. The best steelhead returns have occurred when freshwater smolt production was high and marine survival produced up to 2 or more recruits per spawner. Those kinds of environmental conditions simply are not happening, at least not with any regularity, in recent years.