I'll tell ya something else about them SQUAWS, I've gutted many of them and see that the larger ones are feeding on the fry not the hatchery sized smolt that are released... But as I mentioned earlier you don't catch many if any native smolt at all in the lewis year around unless your fishing lucia falls and above... That's where the few native smolts that actually make it are rearing and you do have the incidental native smolt catch..

But on to other problems that I've been seeing.. I've already landed 4 HATCHERY summer runs and only one of them didn't have a SEAL mark on it... I've also caught and released some nice Native Winter Steelhead that had net marks around their necks, and SEAL LION MARKS DOWN THERE SIDES and I wonder where they came from.. So TANGLE NET MY A$$, those net's have to have a larger mesh size than the game department is talking about or fish wouldn't run into these problems...
BAN ALL NETS IN THE LOWER COLUMBIA AND KILL ALL SEALS AND SEA LIONS, and you'll see our NATIVE WINTER AND EARLY NATIVE SPRING STEELHEAD MAKE A TURN FOR THE BETTER... As they have in the past couple of years without all the netting pressure and small spring chinook and smelt runs which don't attract as many SEALS AND SEA LIONS!!! But it hasn't been until the last couple of years that we've had surplus runs of spring chinook and smelt runs that attract all the NETTERS and SEA LIONS!!!!
By the way I LOVE BAIT for this reason here:

And, another look at the monster taken on a 1141, with 8lb leader and #2 hook... This pic was taken yesterday, 4-18-02...

Keith