Stlhead -
Regarding the regulations on the Snoqualmie - Those changes were put in place in an attempt to rebuilt the wild summer steelhead returning to the forks of the Tolt. Duirng the late 1980s the average escapement of summer steelhead in the South Fork Tolt was only 70 fish a year and never above 100 fish. The regulation changes: including ban baits, barbless hooks, closing of the the forks to fishing, stopping of hatchery plants of summer fish in the Tolt occurred in 1992. Over the last 10 years the average escapement has increased more than 2.5 fold to nearly 200 fish a year (range 115 to 366 per year). Obivously the combined regulations were effective. How much of that can be attributed to the bait ban of course is unknown.

TJ -
Yes it is early to decide the fate of this year's wild run. And the strength of hatchery returns are notorious poor predictor of wild runs. However the escapement of wild steelhead last year on the Snohomish and Stillaguamish were the lowest that has been seen. That cpombined with the growing indication of widespread terrible marine survival makes this discussion timely.

Sparkey's ideas are a nice starting point. This coming summer the WDFW commission will be taking and considering major fishing regulation changes again making this timely.

Question for your consideration - If the worst comes to pass (I'm sure that we all agree that we are hoping for the better than that) would you prefer limitations on methods (for example bait bans) or shorter seasons?

Hooking mortality -
As pointed out by CWUgirl there is quite a bit of information available on hooking mortality. Especially for trout (applicable to steelhead parr and smolts) where mortaltiy of bait caught fish has been consistently found to be in the 30 to 50% range. When thinking about hooking mortality it is useful to divide your consideration on the fish being impacted. Hooking mortaltiy with bait on adult steelhead is generally lower than that for trout with values for winter fish typically pegged around 10%. For spawn-out steelhead (kelts) it is closer to that found for trout - they are actively feeding and the likehood of being hooking in critical areas about the same as trout (more than 30%).

Absolute mortality form hooking mortaltiy is difficult to pin down in studies - are fish dying from hooking mortality or from the handling as part of the study. However when various aspects are compared the same study we can see how various gear etc comapres to each other (may not know what the mortlatiy maybe but we can see whether one is twice the other). A local study that may be useful here is one done by U of W and WDFW on sea-run cutthroat on the Stillaguamish where mortality from various size hooks and arificals. Bottom line:
Mortality with bait and # 10 hooks was 39.5%
with bait and #6 hooks was 46.5%
with bait and #2 hooks was 58.1%
with bait and #1/0 hooks was 40.7%
with spinner with teble hook - 23.8%
with spinner with single hook - 15.9%

The bait was night crawlers. The spinners were #2 Blue Fox etc with either #4 treble or # 6 siwash.

Another thing to remember is that during the summer there is a lot of fishing going on that is not targeting steelhead.

Beezer -
Does your concern about a delayed opening impacts on the Sky hatchery chinook fishery reflect that of your TU chapter.

I hope it doesn't mean that TU in WAshington is continuing to place access to hatchery fish above wild fish protection.

Hope some of this information is helpful in your discussions - hopefully we can find ways of protecting a wild resource in trouble while providing recreation.

How to best do this of course depends on our collective desires. The best chance to do so depends on putting emotions aside, collecting factual information, and examining the issue from a variety of view points. My observations are that those involved in this discussion have the passion and talent to do so if we are willing to look issues objectively.

Tight lines
Smalma