I guess I don't understand all the fuss about hatchery vs native fisheries. I travel a bit and have witnessed marvelous salmon and steelhead fishing in upstate New York as well as in Michigan and Wisconsin. Not just gear guys either. I've seen a lot of very happy flyfishermen with their G-Loomis rods and elegant reels yanking their fair share of some very magnificent hatchery fish out of those waters too.

And not a native fish anywhere to be seen, except for a rare atlantic salmon mixed in with all the chinook and skamania strain steelhead on the Oswego and Salmon rivers in upstate New York.

Again, no native fish. All of these runs are professionally and intensely-managed hatchery efforts using stocks that we Northwesterners provided. Little ones out, big ones back. Happy, happy fishermen, and with generally good reason because there are many more fish per fisherman there than we have here, by far.

What am I missing? What is this abiding distaste for hatchery fish? Where we have native runs of either salmon or steelhead that can feasibly be protected let's do it (for example, the North Fork Lewis fall chinook). But where we have predominantly hatchery fish get out there and enjoy them.