Hi Gooose, I knew right off whereof you spoke, as I have fished those streams at least once a year just for the hell of it since they declined in the late 80's, and a whole lot more before then. These little streams are horribly vulnerable to overfishing, and remain so today, but not necessarily to the fishing we all think of. Here are a couple fisheries that are still going on relatively unchecked:

1. Tribal, and even at times non-tribal, netting of chum and even other "hatchery" salmon. The early run steelhead that used to populate these rivers are in the saltchuck about the same time that many of these fisheries are going on, and very likely get intercepted "incedentally". Even if released from a beach seine or a gillnet they are dead.

2. Kids and even adults out on a summer vacation throwing a barbed hook and salmon egg in the accesible areas, especially on federal land, and "releasing trout" (ie, next years smolts), all of which have swallowed the hook and are dead on release. This is common everywhere in spite of selective fishing regulations - the ignorant crackers just don't know or care.

Add these problems to the fact that wild fish were decimated, mostly by tribal commercial fishing after the Boldt decision, but also by sportfishermen who couldn't see releasing that fish into a gillnet, by interbreeding and competition with hatchery fish, resulting in the nearly total loss of unique genetic material that allowed these fish to live in these unusually high gradient limited rearing area streams, and by the loss of pretty much all salmonids other than lower river chum and the nutrients they used to provided to the upriver rearing areas that steelhead smolts preferred, and you have a river in which the fish will never recover.

My solution - stop all commercial fishing (yeah, that means the tribes) except in the Hoodsport Hatchery zone and around the Skok. The Skoks could do this but it's kind of hard on the Port Gambles - how about they share areas with the Skoks? And stop all river fishing except for chum in the fall and total C&R of all steelhead in the winter - and maybe stop that too for awhile, although if the river was open on a permit basis, with a requirement of the permit being that all steelhead caught and released be reported, that would provide data for WDFW to track recovery. There are a very few wild fish still around, I actually released one last year, a hen that was all of 3.6 pounds - pretty, heavily spotted little thing. A few of these should be put into a broodstock program to see if these can be encouraged along. For sure stop dumping Chambers Creek stock in there - they return nothing to the fishery.

There is no reason these rivers, 98% of which are in federal lands with pristine watersheds, excellent riparian habitat except for the lower mile, with the estuaries relatively intact and mostly in state ownership, should not be producing tons of fish. Get the right fish in there and leave them alone.