Cowlitzfisherman -
Thanks for the kind words. I try to bring some of my limited knowledge to these discussion in hope that it helps to clarify issues. While I can't claim to be the expert fisherman that many at this site are I'm an avid life long angler and I try to temper "my science" with on the water observations.

The hooking mortality literature has had good agruement that mortalities form using flies is low (generally less than 10%). At the time of the Pauley/Thomas study cited the major controversy was surrounding the use of bait on anadromous waters and whether limiting the hook size (either larger or smaller) would provide relief from mortalities. To add additional variables would have complicated the study as well as requiring the researchers to catch more fish (they had a difficult time catching their needs as it was).

There is good general agreement among the researchers that much of the mortality is caused by the damage the hook does (amount of bleeding) and that certain locations are more damaging than others. The critical areas have been determined to be the eye, the gills, the tongue and the esophagus. These areas of course have large blood supplies thus any damage is likely to cause bleeding. Fish hooked in these "critcal" areas were much more likely to die than those hooked in non-critcal areas (rest of the mouth and jaws). To compare the relative lethal impacts from various gear all one has to do is to compare the % of the fish hooked in critical areas - a mehtod that results in twice the number fish hook in critical areas will have higher mortalities.

In Pauley/Thomas they had 178 fish caught with bait of which 99 or 55.6% hooked in critical areas. They found that the average mortality for critically hooked fish was 70%; about 4 times that of non-critically hooked fish. For those critical areas the mortality varied from a low of 53.8% for those fish hooked in the eye to 95.5% for those hooked in the gills.

To get at what the potential mortality might be for fly caught sea-run cutthroat I kept track of where fish were hooked (critical verus non-critical) over several years during my fishing. While I didn't record the results of all my fishing when I did keep track of hook site location for all cutthroat caught on a given trip. I tried to fish several times a year and on several rivers (Stillaguamish, Snohomish and Skagit systems). Fishing was done with mostly size 6 and 4 flies (occassionally size 8s). The flies were tied on mustad 3399A if that is important. Hopefully my sample size is large enough to be valid.

I recorded the hook site location from a total of 672 fly caught cutthroat. Only 33 or 4.9% were hooked in critical areas. This is less than 1/10 of that found by Pauley/Thomas on bait caught fish. Clearly the hooking mortality for fly caught fish is much lower than that with bait. This is further backed up with my own water observations. I generally see only 1 floater (immediate mortality) every 3 or 4 trips (about 1 out of every 100 fish released). Generally the total mortality (including delayed) is only 2 to 5 times the immediate mortality.

I don't have any knowledge of studies down with different style hooks other than treble, siwash, circle etc. However if you are interested it is straight forward to compare the % of critcially hooked fish in you own fishing. For example I noticed that if I used long shank hooks I tended to hook more fish in the eye (evidently the fly rolled on the fish's take and ended in its eye -ouch). As a result I no longer use long shank hooks.

As you suggested Sparkey maybe able to give you a more definitive on variability of hook size between various styles. It is my obseration that hook size (gap - distance between point and shank) has some variability between those styles that I'm familar with but are generally close in size (within a size or so).

Stlhead -
I can gompletely understand your desire to have consisitent regulations. However with increasing pressures on a complex resource (different species, behaviors, and population status) we are going to be faced with either complex regulations or reduced opportunities (simple seasons).

Are you suggesting that the opening date on the Hoh be moved to June 1 or in Sparkey's example June 15th?

Berkley boy75-
Our steelhed migrate out into the Pacific Ocean with fish going west of the international Date Line. It is doubtful that pollution would effect just steelhead as sockeye, pinks and chums also much of the same areas.

Note - the hooking mortality cited by Obessed is for adult winter steelhead.

Tight lines
Smalma