Catch and release is utilization and harvest, altho a bit lite on the harvest. Foregone opportunity applies to unharvested and unutilized resources. C&R very much utilizes the resource. No one is even contesting that. C&R is simply one of many choices among forms that utillzation might take. The state is not without the capability to harvest its full allocation - that is what foregone opportunity is about - though either extensive C&R, a customary C&K fishery, or heck, WDFW could open a season of non-treaty sport gill-netting on coastal rivers deemed to have a harvestable surplus. Foregone opportunity is an over-used scare tactic as applied to potential losses to non-treaty fishing opportunities. I think we ought to worry about the real problems in fisheries and disregard the imaginary ones.

As for treaties, Congress has the power to modify treaties - even without the consent of the tribes. Some original treaties with tribes were modified before being ratified by the Senate, and tribes were stuck with the outcome. Of course, that was the 1800s and early 1900s. For example, the Nisqually Tribe didn't agree to having the U.S. government take half their reservation to create Ft. Lewis, but the gov't. did it. That probably wouldn't happen nowadays.

RobertAllen3, I think you work against your and our interests when you say the problem is with WDFW and that there are no harvestable wild steelhead. I don't know your background and qualifications, but your statement presumes you know what a host of trained and experienced fisheries professionals don't. That approach is only going to work in an environment where those fisheries pros don't have any influence. I don't know where that environment is.

I think there are better approaches. It is more productive to argue against MSY/ MSH harvest models, because it is a FACT that most fish stocks worldwide have collapsed when managed by that model. It is more productive to argue social values; i.e. I value near-maximum conservation of remaining wild steelhead stocks by increasing spawning escapement and recreational C&R fisheries. It is impossible to prove that such a value is wrong. Conversely, we cannot prove that a C&K value is wrong; it isn't wrong, but it works against population conservation if conducted in an MSY/MSH model.

Statewide wild steelhead release will not come about via a biological argument, at least not on biology alone. It will come about as an expression of social values among the angling community. The biological contribution to the argument occurs in the context of ESA threatened and endangered species listings of Columbia and Snake River steelhead stocks. C&R allows substantial fishing opportunity with minimal fish mortality where the alternative would be to severely reduce or eliminate fishing to achieve a necessary conservation objective.

The argument for C&R on the state's most productive coastal rivers is to "improve" the quality of fishing opportunity. The simple fact is that the fish you release today may be the steelhead I cast over tomorrow. C&R results in more fish being in the river on a given day that does C&K, and we will cast our lines over fewer fishless pools as the outcome. It does amaze me that anyone wouldn't prefer that, but as they say, it takes all kinds.

The argument that C&R results in increased steelhead production is without merit when spawning escapement goals are otherwise met. C&R can help meet the escapement goal only if overfishing is the otherwise predictable outcome. C&R has been the dominant management theme for Skagit native steelhead since 1981. The allowable harvest on natives has been 2,000 or less since the late 1980s. The run size peaked at 16,000 in 1986 and has generally been less than 10,000 through the 1990s. There is no indication that spawning escapement was limiting productivity by the early 1980s. The population increased from about 3,000 in the late 1970s to whatever the river system could support, plus the effects of ocean survival. Due to the lack of increased productivity from larger escapements, WDFW agreed with the Skagit tribes to lower the escapement goal from 10,000 to 6,000 spawners. The data simply didn't show increased production from higher numbers of spawners. So whether those steelhead over and above the 6,000 level (wish there were that many this year!) should be subject to harvest or C&R is largely a social, not a biological, issue. One can of course argue that a larger escapement results in better habitat penetration and distribution, improves population diversity, and ecological values such as that, but one cannot effectively argue that it results in increased steelhead production. Because it hasn't.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.