It dont really see a difference. Wild Salmon and wild steelhead should be treated the same.

I have talked to Bios out here on the OP who say the Quileute river system is produceing as many fish as it can. They say the run size has flattened out. No matter how many smolts wild and hatchery are released only so many will survive. The river system only has enough food to raise so many smolt. So I tend to agree the river systems in our state are produceing as much as they can.

How do we get more fish? FERTILIZE!!!!!!!!!

If the river has more food more smolt will survive both hatchery and wild.

Before they started throwing dead hatchery salmon on the river banks the wild ones were the only ones that were food for smolt. With declineing numbers of wild salmon we got declineing numbers of smolt therfor less returning adults the next cycle and so on.

Without healthy runs of salmon we cant have healthy runs of steelhead. Steelhead use the salmon as a food source during a juvenile period as well as the bugs. And the river will only produce as many steelhead and bugs as it can.

I think are fish runs will explode if they are given the chance. The steelhead even faster but only as fast as the salmon can produce food for them (food being the salmon). The steelhead play on the salmon run size and if you have big runs of salmon you have have higher smolt survival for steelhead.

The Quileute system had just over 14,000 Winter steelhead adults spawn two years ago.
On the Quileute System the survival rate from smolt to adult can be as high as 15% under ideal conditions. If all the fish were aloud to do thier thing for one cycle without any harvest you could see a steelhead run of 14,000 produce 210,000 adults the next cycle.

Just amagine 210,000 steelhead. But the river could only produce that many if it had enough food but the system only has enough food for 14,000.

With the projected salmon runs this year being close to historical records there just could be enough food.

The sad thing is we will never know because under the MSY model all the "EXCESS" fish will be harvested. Be it the tribes, the sporties, or comercial the excess fish will be caught.

We will never see our rivers even produce 10% of the potential because they arnt given the chance.

So as it sits now my home river is only producing enough fish to maintain genetic diversity, but just enough. WE HOPE!!!!

I rambeled way off base here but I hope you can see why wild salmon are just as important as wild steelhead. Without one you just cant have the other. So even if you dont hold the wild salmon as deer to your heart you should because every one of those you kill makes your home river loose more wild steelhead produceing pontential.

REMEMBER THE NEXT TIME YOU TAKE A WILD SALMON OUT OF YOUR FAVORITE WILD STEELHEAD RIVER THAT YOUR TAKEING EVEN TO POSSIBILITY AWAY FOR MORE WILD STEELHEAD.