One reason why Nisqually steelhead are down is the loss of Muck Creek. With its warmer water and high productivity it produced a lot of smolts, many of which were age-1. That component is gone, as is Muck Creek.

As to the Skagit, the lack of ecologically appropriate salmon escapements has kept steelhead down. The Keogh River studies showed that increasing productivity in a steelhead run was directly related to nutrient input from either fertilizer or pinks. Up in AK, on Ford Arm Creek, the coho run was considered self-sustaining. At no pink escapement it produced 1,000 harvest at a 60% harvest rate. At 2 kg pinks pre square metre you got 5-8000 harvest at that same 60% rate. The coho were self-sustaining AND at carrying capacity but capacity was determined by the number of spawning salmon. WDFW has seen a response by steelhead in some systems with lots of spawning salmon, but those are the anomaly.

We are aggressively pursuing cultural oligotrophication of our salmonid streams. We're doing lots of other stuff to them, but CO is driving carrying capacity down the hole.

I was using the Lake WA sockeye as an example of where WDF used certain numbers and when shown they were wrong they stuck with them. Lake WA's problem is all the other fish in the lake; sockeye aren't really happy in lakes with lots of other species, especially ones that eat them.

So, yes, we are at carrying capacity for many salmon in freshwater but that capacity can be increased with substantial and sustained increases in spawning salmon.