Fair Hooker, you say that:
"There are many areas where there is good habitat for anandromous fish, complete catch and release on wild fish, and wild fish populations that are extinct, or near extinct."

Where are these rivers?

I am not a believer in any "silver bullet" solutions for bringing our wild steelhead populations back from the brink. Each river and probably each stock has its own suite of issues, many of which we haven't identified and/or don't understand. But the correlation between a bonked wild steelhead and a reduction in the spawning population is no mystery. And because most stocks are being negatively impacted by multiple factors, an appropriate respnse must try to remedy as many threats as possible. Direct harvest is one of those threats. And while some believe that "CnR" is not a conservation tool, it is clearly more conservative than allowing wild fish harvests. The state is faced with the conflicting goals of providing fishing opportunities AND protecting wild stocks, and to me CnR regs offer a much better tradeoff.