So we all want our cake and want to eat it too .

I for one am a huge proponent for wild fish and do as much as I can for supporting them . You can not and will not ever replace the superior genentics that they possess .

The Skagit river was once the best of the best and is now ,for many reasons , only a fraction of what it was .

Many of the Puget sound streams were the same way .

As angler opportunity diminshed with the declining runs , hatcherys popped up all over to help supplement angler opportunity.

The one thing I can say good about the the WDFW is that they do have the hatchery runs returning quite early compared to the wild runs to help eliminate cross breeding .

We all hit the "traditional steelhead opener" right around Thanksgiving . How many wild fish are we actually expecting to catch during those first few months of the season , November , Decmber, January ?

I can't speak for you , but I am hunting hatchery fish during those months and am actually suprised to a wild fish during this time frame .

If we as sportsmen go out looking for wild fish twelve months of the year and expect to be catching any kind of numbers we are going to be very disapointed .

Let's face it . Wild fish timing is getting going in February and then picking up through March and April .Closed May and then reopening in June . Once again , what are we looking for ? Hatchery summer runs through the summer and then back to the hatchery winter runs returning in November . Full circle .

If we had to rely strictley on wild fish runs for all of our angling opportunity, how much opportunity would we really have ?

We want to do all that we can to protect our wild fish runs , and respectfully so , but at the same time the reason that we want to protect them is that so we can go out and fish for them .

The Skagit River durng the CnR season this past year was a hair away from being closed along with many other Puget Sound streams . It was kept opened much to the dismay of many anglers siding with the fact that if the runs were to weak to support a CnR season , the river should not be open at all .

Did this keep away all the wild fish Purists ?No . If any of you fished the Skagit/Sauk during the CnR season , you probably saw more angling pressure than ever .

This all on stocks that are supposedly "dangerously low " .

It sounds like nobody wants a fish in the river that is not of superior genetics , but we all want the most angling opportunity as possible . Regardless of what impact that we may have on wild fish .

Whether or not the Skagit can support the Grandy Creek Hatchery is ultimately up to the the State .

How much impact we as sportsmen place on the wild fish stocks is up to us.

Is supporting a hatchery like Grandy Creek good for wild fish because of the impacts that it places on the wild fish runs ? Maybe not .

The benefits that is introduces as far as additional angling opprtunity is for you to decide .

Do we target adult hatchery ? or adult wild fish ? Which one would you rather preserve ?