I am a member of the WSC, have been since day one. But I am not speaking on behalf of the WSC, I am giving you my personel opinion.

The thing that makes the WSC differnt is that it is made up of both flyfishermen, gearfishermen and those that fish in both ways.

The WSC does not want to take away any of your fishing opportunitys and we are far from fanatics. We just want to increase fishing oppurtunity's by preserving and boosting our the wild steelhead returns of the PNW. We are for 100% catch and release of wild steelhead and believe that a population can sustain a C&R fishery it should be allowed. On the other hand though, if a population of steelhead are not meeting escapement numbers we believe that the fish should not be fished for.

This occured last spring and will happen again this spring. The popular and very loved C&R fisheries on the Puget Sound rivers were all stopped last March and April due to predicted below escapement goals of wild steelhead on these rivers. We were in no way against the closures and in fact we supported them BUT but we were opposed to the management of these fisheries that led to the necassary closures.