H20 you'll find if you look nonselectively at "ALL AVAILABLE" scientific studies that the overall answer is inconclusive on use of bait vs no bait and barbed hooks vs barbless hooks. Sorry but thats science for you. What it comes down to is this...choose your 50% of science that supports your "Ideology" and use it politically to support your imposition of your ideology, ethics or religious beliefs on others thru laws and regulations unsupported by conclusive science. Myself...I can't support this method...but I strongly support personal choice in choice of ethics in our fisheries. In the end irregardless of current law and any changes made to them this is the only way any thing will ever change as long as there is no one to enforce the laws.

As to displaying dark fish....would you support a complete closure of all of our rivers from February thru June? Me ...I choose not to make the issue personal.....guy wants to post pics of large dark fish...cool....as long as they practice careful cnr methods on those fish not a problem.

BTW I've rarely hooked any smolts anywhere specifically on bait anymore than on nonbait presentations. Maybe I fish the wrong rivers.
I have though hooked in the jaw a fair number of searun cutts on some rivers but inconsistently.