Just a couple of thoughts on this one. I am no expert, but I have caught lots of shakers and read a bit on the topic and talked to some fish biologists about salmon and their lifecycle.

First of all, these 10" blackmouth shakers are about a year away from being legal fish. I'd rather kill a blackmouth when it was 8-10 lbs instead of 8-10 inches. Also, they are not all hatchery fish, there are many resident wild chinook in puget sound despite the claims of others. Wild chinook are killed as shakers by anglers with barbless hooks.

I think the key here is to minimize hooking mortality of the shakers. There are a number of problems, proper handling and release techniques would help a lot. Salmon shakers are much more fragile than freshwater trout of the same size.

However, I think the biggest problem is downriggers. It is hard to release a live shaker after its been dragged to death clipped to a downrigger. I mainly mooch or troll cutplugs with 4 oz or less sinker although I will fish downriggers occasionally. I would say over 90% of the shakers we catch are released live in good condition and will likely recover fully. This is because we imediately detect the bite when mooching and catch and release the shakers promptly. With a downrigger the fish may be dragged for a half hour or more before being released. This is obviously bad for the shaker.

To minimize downrigger/shaker problems, I would only troll big lures or lures without the trailer hook when fishing downriggers. Almost all the shakers I've seen caught come on the trailer hook. For spoons, especially the coyote, I think they are shaker slayers. If there are shakers around I won't fish them.

Those are the facts as I see them