Rob-
Wonderful to hear the you have not had to endure of the agony of a critically hooked wild fish that you had or wish to release. Many of us have not be as lucky.

Your idea of banning fishing when temperatures exceed a thershold is interesting though I'm sure how to implement such a standard - however it certainly would be helpful to the fish. We see large diurnal temperature swings with the magnitude dependent on daily weather patterns and stream flow conditions. Perhaps the simplest way would be for total closures during July and August.

In the same vein there is some information that kelts (spawnouts) also are likely to experience higher hooking mortalities - should we be closing fishing while they are in our systems? Say March 1 to the end of June.

I am somewhat surprised that in SW Washington you don't occassionally encounter suicidal wild pre-smolts. Here in the "overharvested" rivers of the North Puget Sound area in my experience such fish are fairly common even on swung single barbless flies (occassionally fatally impaling themselves on the barbless hook).

Tight lines
Smalma