SirBonk,
I will agree that there are some rivers where the genetics of the fish are likely not what they were before hatchery brats "invaded". Therefore, one could argue that those rivers don't have original native stock. However, if I took you for a week of march native fishing on the Oregon coast rivers that I fish every year, you'd see that each river still produces its own unique run of native steelhead. The Nehalem river natives arrive early and are big,thich-shouldered, colorful brutes. The Kilchis river natives are varied in size and are very shy for wild steelhead. The Trask river fish are mostly small, seem to arrive all at once, and are extremely aggressive. The Wilson has an early run of large natives that spawns high in the system and a later run of smaller natives that spawns in the lower river.
Each river has native fish with very unique characteristics. Getting to learn each different river and each population of steelhead produced over thousands of years by the varying conditions that exist in each river is, to me, the best part of fishing for steelhead.
Hatchery fish, to me, are mostly all the same river to river. Even the wild broodstock hatchery fish are more like generic/inbred hatchery brats than true wild steelhead. Rarely does any hatchery steelhead I catch fight as well as a native.
If native steelhead were gone, I'd fish for wild trout and give up on their ocean-going cousins. Luckily, we've still got quite a few rivers with nates, so I can still get excited about steelhead this time of year.