Good topic!
This is a major regulation cycle and for all those with ideas on how to improve the various fisheries through regulation changes now is the time to get those ideas in. If you have no new ideas please review the various proposals that will be coming up for consideration and comment later this year.

Get involved - as far as I'm concern if you don't you no longer have a legitimate right to complaint about the regulation/rules.

Jerry -
Wild Steelhead Release (WSR) is not a magic bullet that is going to restore wild runs. In nearly every case those populations that supported harvestable fish 20 years ago and don't today have problems other than harvest. If currrent escapements were less than carrying capacity (over fished) then the next generation's run size on the average would be larger than the previous escapement. That is not the situation for most of the above populations. Those popualtions will not rebound until those other factors change.

Boater-
Restoring fish runs to historic run sizes will take much more than WSR. Habitat modeling for Puget Sound chinook (ESA listed species) for example shows that the capacity of most of our rivers have been reduced 5 to 10 fold. Elinimating all fishing will not restore our runs to historic levels.

Rob -
To imply that hooking mortality can not be significant is being less than honest. If fishing results in a fish not surviving to spawn that is an impact. Those impacts include not only harvest but hooking/handling mortalities of both adults and juveniles. In my neck of the woods the current low flows and warm weather likley means we'll be seeing summer hooking/handling much higher than normal. Some how I think you'd be concern with a CnR bait fishery directed toward parr/smolts.

To the board -
WSR is a fisheries management tool that has been used to allocate fishing impacts. Originally it was used to access hatchery fish.
If you wish to allocate wild fish fishing impacts to just hatchery and non-consumative fisheries than WSR is a nice tool. However it is NOT a conservation tool.

Tight lines
Smalma