Backlash2 -
Nothing personal - I hope this is about exchanging ideas and exploring pro and cons of various approachs and hopefully increase our collective understanding.

1) My "guidelines" were just that. They would serve to establish the framework upon which regulations would be decided. With cut and dry guidelines I suspect that the regulations would be no more complicated than now and likely simplier.

The "guidelines" are complex. Reread them and think about what they would mean for management. I believe there is a lot of meat there.

How would you improve them?

2) What I was suggesting was not management for MSH but rather using the MSH point to decide whether any fishing would be allowed to be direct towards wild steelhead. The objective would to achieve escapements somewhere between MSH and carrying capacity thus setting a standard higher than MSH.

What escapement do you think we should shot for??

3) If "conking" one wild fish a year is too much are you suggesting that everyone limit their catch and release of wild fish to less than 20 a year (at 5% hooking mortality 20 releases equals 1 dead fish)?

Tight lines
Smalma