CF, differentiating wild steelhead from hatchery steelhead is not a problem at all - CWTs are unnecessary. Every steelhead has scales, and every wild fish has a distinctive scale pattern from hatchery fish, based upon the way scale annuli (rings) are laid down in the radically different early life history conditions of hatchery and wild steelhead. These scales are easy to read and in studies I have participated in could be read with 99+% accuracy. Besides, all hatchery fish are clipped and all wild fish aren't on most rivers. I think the gathering of data is not a problem.

What is a problem is MSY, an obviously faulty human-centric assumption based upon incomplete data. One only has to ask, if "overescapement" is so bad for fish, then when they are left to their own devices why do they do it? The answer is simple - it is good for stocks of salmonids to "overescape", which is why they evolved to do it. We only know some of the answers why, but among them are fertilizing the watersheds for productivity of the next generation, excavating the gravel to dislodge silt so the subsequent eggs placed on top of the first redds have a high survival rate, as a hedge against killer floods that wipe out early or late portions of the run, as a way to satiate predators so more than enough fish will survive to carry on - the list can go on and on. No where are we near to ecological optimum for any wild salmon run, and the release of all wild salmonids is the only way to get there.

As far a someone claiming "forgone opportunity" as a reason to prevent release of fish, that is a bunch of bunk and here is why. The value of a sport caught fish is 15 times or more higher than the value of a commercially harvested fish, and this value is in the CATCHING, not the harvesting. I and thousands like me will spend many days on the water, and many dollars preparing for and during those days, just to catch a fish. The dollars I spend have nothing to do with harvesting a fish - I have spent them and enriched the economy whether I catch one or not. However, if I do catch fish, many fish, and release them, I will come back more often to do it again and again. Others will be attracted to the high numbers of steelhead for them to catch and release. This is real, not "forgone", opportunity, and produces real dollars. Now here is the kicker, the more steelhead released, the more catching goes on, the more dollars generated. These dollars are generated in directly in proportion to the opportunity to catch and release a fish.

There real "forgone opportunity" is when this fish is gillnetted and sold for pennies a pound. The economy of the state has forgone the benefits of all the effort and dollars we would have put into catching that fish over and over if it had been left in the river. This is wrong, verging on immoral, and criminally wasteful. It is a stupid arrangement, and it is way stupid for anyone to support it, let alone state agencies and representatives. Tell them so, frequently.