Bob -
You are certainly corect - fisheries management is not rocket science. What is tough is to get anglers to apply what has been learned and use some common sense. This issue of big fish producing big fish is a perfect illustration. I can't begin to count the number of times over the last year that have seen fishing reports on this and other sites that fly in direct conflict of the ideas put forward in the above article.

Typical example would be from last fall and it would go something like this: "Bubba and I fished zipper lip #2 yesterday - fishing was hot. Brought 20 coho to the boat and kept 4 all over 15#"."

What is especially interesting is that the folks that are most likely to complaint about the state of current fisheries management are the very ones that tend to produce such reports. They might complain about hatchery coho being small but then go out and bonk only the largest they catch or only the biggest females etc. DUH!! As I said the biggest trick in fisheries management is the application of common sense by both the managers and the anglers. Greed trumps common sense way too often!

Tight lines
Smalma