I couldn't agree with you more stlhead. That statement is definitely NOT universally agreed upon... It's a big debate that should be settled at some point--are Catch and Release and selective fisheries ok for salmon in the salt water?

I've been at Sekui for silver season and could not believe the mark/unmarked rate. I think we released about 5 or so for each marked fish that we kept. That ratio combined with how I saw other fishermen treating the fish kind of bothered me. I went a second time thinking it couldn't be as bad, but it was and I haven't returned to fish silvers there.

In the ocean, charter boats do catch and release and have for many years--but I don't think they can't release a fish without netting it first. There has to be high mortality. Seems that if you look at a salmon wrong it loses scales.

I believe strongly there would be less impact to the fish by allowing people to catch two (or one, in the case of kings) fish and be done with it...