C'mon guys if you can't tell the difference 9 times out of 10 between a smolt nibble and a steelhead chow you don't know how to drift fish.
My fishing partner fishes spinners while I fish bait and I've seen through the years how much more willing a wild fish is to take a spinner than bait a 5 inch smolt will slam a spinner thats almost as big as it is with such aggresiveness ive seen numerous times the hook in their gills, back, eyes etc. So lets not classify this as a bait versus flies or bait versus hardware. If worse comes to worse the best way is to shut them down to all types of fishing. Because no matter what the technique and where in the river you fish your always at the "risk" of accidentaly hooking and killing wild smolts.