Hey everyone.......

No need to get bent here......nobody's getting killed.

I think it's been a pretty good disussion, and the conclusion I've come to is that our fisheries need to be micromanaged, rather than having regulations put in place statewide. The Wynoochee isn't the Lewis isn't the Skykomish isn't the Kalama. The WDFW has been only marginally successful at studying single watersheds and developing strategies to manage them. Whether this is due to budget constraints, lack of personnel, or a mindset within the WDFW is a matter of debate. But if they don't learn to micromanage each watershed differently, then trouble is brewing.

What's important here is that a dialogue is taking place. Obviously, H2O and Keith see things differently, but that's not a tragedy. It's an illustration of how conditions vary from river to river, and why statewide regulations tend to be too general in scope. Keep the dialogue going, and you get a chance to see the slippery slope we're standing on. Bait ban today, ban on fishing altogether tomorrow? We need to find a "level of comfort" for doing what we're doing which is fishing for (whether intentional or not) fish that are threatened. I'm sure PETA's comfort level is that fishing end completely. That's not my comfort level, but neither is bonking nates on the OP because "guides in Forks would suffer because of C&R regs". You find a reasonable comfort level by exchanging ideas......exactly what's going on here.

Keep the exchang going. And don't disregard other people's opinions unless you want yours disregarded as well.