Really, most all of you are right. There are river systems that are pretty much totally trashed with hydropower and habitat losses that mitigation hatcheries were designed to correct. These systems should have hatcheries. There are also systems that have no dams, relatively to very pristine headwaters (some in national parks) and relatively undeveloped estuaries. The best systems left are right in Bob's back yard. There are some in my backyard too. These should NOT have hatcheries on them as they are not necessary to mitigate anything and really don't, all that happens is that hatchery fish replace wild fish. All the other things (overfishing, habitat loss, etc.) are worse problems than most anything a hatchery can do, however, unless it is contribute to these problems by deceiving people into thinking overfishing and development is ok as the hatchery will take care of it.

So here's what I want - lots of hatcheries on dammed, screwed up systems, hatcheries designed to produce large, fat smolts that need little habitat on their way to the ocean - put a bunch of them in net pens at the mouth even for a couple weeks before release. These systems then are the places people go to catch fish to eat, commercial, sport, and tribe. Then take all the hatcheries off the rivers that have no dams and adequate spawning and rearing habitat. These have wild fish release fisheries on them, period - no commercial, no tribal, no trophy fish retention, nothing. Tribes on these river systems would have to agree to transfer their commercial operations to hatchery systems, or perhaps they could be given an exclusive area to guide C&R fishermen (this would work particularly well on the Quinault Reservation.) Ocean fishing, or fishing in other mixed stock areas like the Straits or the Sound is allowed, wild fish are released, and if there is to be any commercial or tribal trolling in the ocean, then the quota is based upon weak stock management. And for crissake, protect the habitat in undeveloped river and estuarine systems from development, and control pollution from point and non-point sources agressively.

This would work, guys