I just found out something about this wonderful net fishery that pees me off even more - they are not even using tangle nets - instead they are using 5 1/2 inch mesh because they "don't have any tangle nets so we want to use what we have". This crap is catching 2-3 steelhead for each springer. Mortality of released chinook on 8 inch is 50%, so it has to be at least that bad on smaller steelhead caught on 5 1/2. This is 50+% mortality on ESA listed wild steelhead. Moreover, the geniuses at WDFW have said only 10% of the kings die in a 5 1/2 net, when 12% die in a real tangle net. I would say easily we are looking at 25+% mortality using this larger mesh, and probably at least 50% on 3 year olds. No wonder I couldn't catch anything this last weekend. This is cr@p - fish commission is getting and earful from me tonight, and all you should chime in also - this is a huge step backward and is guaranteed to result in an early closure for us, when they finally figured out that the stinkin commercials killed so many native fish that our measly hooking mortality of 2-3% will be too much for the remaining "endangered" wild fish.