As our Puget Sound rivers are facing another down year for wild winter steelhead, maybe it is time to look into some more unorthodox solutions or drastic measures.

Take for example, our standard June 1 opening for our local rivers...if our rivers are closed under emergency regs in March and April to protect spawning wild steelhead, should we also delay the June 1 opening to allow the system to get totally flushed of these fish???

I can see keeping the upper portions of certain rivers under the standard June 1 opening because how often are wild winter steelhead caught at say the Cable Hole on the Sky on June 1???...not many!!...but how many are caught from Sultan down??...Lots!!

It seems that in the past few years this has become very noticeable as the lower Skykomish has become a boat parade on June 1 of sleds, driftboats...

How about a June 15th opener down low??...or opening the river when the river is determined to be almost void of wild winter steelhead???

Another suggestion...a bait ban in the summer??...How often do countless numbers of wild steelhead smolts and juvenilles inhale a gob of eggs?...and how often do those fish not swim away healthy??...very often!!

I think it is time to not only protect our wild steelhead adults but the juvenilles as well!

This can not only be done with a bait ban in the summer but with a barbless hook restriction as well...if you find the necassity to fish bait, the least you can do is debard the hooks...we all know barbless hooks reduce mortality in trout (which are wild steelhead juvenilles are more or less).


Any thoughts???...any other recomendations!!