who and what determines the carrying capacity of rivers ? and why is it that there would ever be a " surplus " of wild fish in any river ?

If river X has a return of 5000 fish and and it only needed 4000 for it's carrying capacity, so those "extra" 1000 were bonked on the head and then all a sudden it floods or you just plain ol' have your poor ocean suvival are those extra 1000 fish still actually extras ?

what happened (and no offense ) a couple hundred years ago with the fish in the rivers when there were no biologists around to manage all the runs ? how did they ever manage to get this far?

look at the runs of salmon this year . No one can deny how awsome they were . All those "extra " fish around . Then all we get is high water after high water . Mother nature taking care of its self . What would have happened if you only had an average run and fished for MSY and then it floods to beat hell. Were those fish still extra's ?

I know now that man has introduced way too many variables to ever let nature take it's course with our runs and still be able think that we would have a sustainable fishery.

What can we as fisherman do to help ? We tried to get a state wide CnR to go, but that didn't happen. We will never just quit fishing . What could we possibly do to stop tribal gillnetting ?
We all learned in the sixth grade that habitat is the key to survival . Should we be involed more with habitat restoration projects and just give up with what the state and tribes do with the runs ?