cowlitzfisherman:

Your innitial post was to the effect that the very last native steelhead was gone. You cannot restore something that is extinct!

I agree there can be a happy medium we are however still too far on the leaning towards hatchery fish side.
Every river that recieves a steelhead run is planted with hatchery fish, even thoes that have not hatchery.
As of yet there is nothing in our hatchery managment that takes wild fish into consideration. We are not yet managing for wild steelhead other than limiting harvest.

We are doing very little habitat restoration we are changing very little about how we manage hatchery fish.
Exuse me for getting angry but just what the hell do you wanna do to balance things out??? The State of Washington is already DOING NOTHING to save wild steelhead especially in terms of hatchery managment. So anything that is done to "balance things out" has to be done in the interest of wild fish. There is no way to increase hatchery production and have it be good for wild fish..

There is more than enough hatchery fish in all our rivers to sustain enough harvest for everyone! You cannot say you want more hatchery fish and say you want to restore wild runs the two things are absolutely contradictory!
To achieve a balance we need FEWER hatchery fish plain and simple any argument against this fact is an argument against ALL the avaliable science. There is no science that says otherwise. People who want more hatchery fish have to by deffinition want fewer wild fish. Thats the only way it works,

DC CnR release mortality using proper methods is 3% or less.