Rob -
Hope the Montana trip was productive - I find trout fishing a nice change from chasing anadromous fish.

a couple points -
This discussion started with a state wide proposal - in many areas wild juvenile steelhead are common (even in underescaped systems) thus they need to be considered. By the late summer/early fall these pre-smolts can be in the 5 to 7 inch range. I still maintain that hooking mortality on these fish needs to be considered. While my fly fishing skills are likely limited compared to yours my experience with flies while fishing for steelhead/sea-runs/Dollies is that 1-2% of the pre-smolts that I catch accidentally are dead when landed.
(bait caught much higher - in excess of 30%).

I have had the unpleasant experiecne of hooking adult steelhead in critcal areas with swung flies as well as skated and drag free dries. While those encounters are less frequent than most other methods I have used they were not much different that my critical encounters with drifted eggs on winter steelhead - perhaps 1 or 2 out 500.

Your comparison of the collapse SW steelhead with that potential on the coast is an apple and orange comparison. Steelhead management on the coast and on Puget Sound has been with minimum escapement goals - harvest is limited when escapements aren't likely to be met (we an argue about escapement levels later if you wish) while in SW at the time of the population's collapse escapement goals for those system had not been established or rigorously managed for- the populations didn't have protection of escapement goals.

If over-harvest was the sole or major cause of population one would expect that all or most of the populations would rebound when the harvest pressure was removed. In my little corner of the world a couple examples of this rebound has been with sea-run cutthroat and Dollies/bull trout which both have rebounded to levels not seen in decades in most North Puget Sound systems. The fact that many of our steelhead populations haven't rebounded with simiar or greater harvest restrictions indicates that other factors are limiting the populations.

Please take the above to mean that I don't feel harvest issues shouldn't be address; just that I don't expect much (any?) benefit unless freshwater and marine survival conditions improve. Our collective efforts need to diorected towards what I consider large issues and not diverted by these endless arguements over harvest on "healthy populations".

Tight lines
Smalma