You guys are making far to much of this, I well tell your stright from the wardens mouth, that when he walks up to you (prob in fishing attire) and says what are you fishing for, and you reply theres a bunch of pinks going by and they are alot of fun to catch....you well get a ticket,,...but if you respond with I came to fish for trout but cant keep the humpys off my pole but its fun to catch and release them your OK.
the river is open for trout, what lure you use is up to you. I like to throw pink streamers for the dollys, I havent been over there to try to target pinks and probly wont, but You guys are still trying to sound like lounge chair game wardens, here a few examples that I do that might just floor you guys, I take alot of young Navy people fishing (I work at the base) If I cant get the salmon to bite I have a favorite wall out in the San Juans that has alot of quillbacks, greenling, cabazone, and most of all lingcod. I take them over there to fish for rocksfish of which we can keep 1 each, we catch 20 lings and release them, have we done something wrong. no we handle the fish as gently as we can, and eveyone gets to catch fish. heres another when dragging flashers up and down west beach and you watch the 60 to 80 foot range, now and then you well see fish on the finder right on the bottom, the area is open right now for pinks and silvers but not kings. If you drop your down riggers down to just above the bottom have you done anything wrong. I well tell you that these are not pinks/silvers they are kings, I catch and release at least one a year down there that is over 30 pounds, but again I havent done any thing against the law. you guys are trying to inforce laws on a fishing areas that are open for fishing, the guys are releasing the fish that cant be keept. the last thing we need is more laws or more confusion added to the laws we have. If your interested in helping the survival rate of salmon, go out shoot commorants, you know the same ones that sit on the rock in the middle of the river near concrete (skagit) do you know that a Commorant EATS ITS body weight each day of small fish (smolt). The commorant is only one example of whats killing the salmon pollution, lost nets, nets accross the river, warm water, loss of shade on the streams etc is killing more salmon then the catch and release guys that are fishing in a open fishing area called the skagit river.