Ok, I will try to make this as short as possible. Ol' Ronnie "I always yell like an idiot" Kovach is fishing sturg on the L. Columbia in the background.

I guess my biggest problem with your philosophy is that it's foundation is based on flawed science that has proven itself bogus time and again. The numbers I have seen stating maximum capacity on several W. Washington streams are absurd. I can't recall exacts right off hand, but an example was the entire skagit system could only support 16,000 steelhead returning, max. Whatever......and I will find the numbers if you need me too.

My philosophy is, extra wild fish are not "wasted" oppurtunity. We need to realize that some things in this world need not come down to the almighty dollar. Let mother nature determine a max carrying load, and once it happens let her and only her determine how to deal with the extra. And if a stream ever really gets back to its actual maximum carrying capacity(yeah, right), I am perfectly content to live with the thought that some wild fish will die without spawning because there isn't enough spawning water for all of them. This would not be a waste of fish, gentlemen.

In a perfect world, state and federal funding would be sufficient enough to fund all the research, tracking, studies, etc. necessary to form an actual, well informed scientific analysis of each and every stream capable of supporting salmonid life. Then and only then would your proposal carry some interesting potential. This will never happen. And even if it did you would still have to deal with the political forces that be that can't ever keep their paws out of the cookie jar.

What we need to deal with is only the cards we have been dealt. Not a bunch of conclusions formed on incomplete data, trying to find a conclusion to a problem for which you don't have the entire question.

Here is what I would propose;

First of all, come to the realization that there needs to be a balance found between wild fish, and hatchery fish. If we are going to still have fishing through this long process of healthy wild population recovery, people will need to realize that it can't happen without hatchery supplementation.
Do a fairly simple analysis of every stream with a fishable, or recoverable population of fish. Determine what streams stand a fairly decent chance of recovering a wild only fish population. Keep in mind when making the final decisions that there will need to be a certain number of streams that are "sacrificed", if you will, to being hatchery fish rivers. Watersheds that have bared the brunt of sustantial damage do to logging, dams, diking, etc. would be set aside as 'hatchery' rivers (the Cowlitz comes to mind). Some rivers may be deemed to be recoverable even if that means removing dams, or spending a substantial amount of money reversing ecological damage (Elwha, and so be it).

The rivers that are designated as the 'hatchery' rivers, are managed as such, with little to no attention payed to wild fish recovery. If you try to recover the wild fish in a river that you are supplementing with hatchery fish, you look like a dog chasing your tail. Smolts competing for food, adults cross spawning, all the issues we already know about. So.....don't do it. Hatchery streams hatchery, wild streams wild. Rebuild to hatcheries(or build new ones) on these streams to be state of the art, using all the knowledge we actually have. And what the hell, build them big. There will be some staying of hatchery fish to some other river, and some wild fish may stray into a hatchery river, but the world isn't perfect, and the effects would be minimal, if any.

Dinner bell's ringin', more to come.............