obsessed

You said;

Quote:
As far as the commercial harvest of steelhead, the commercials are required to list all salmonid species--steelhead just don't seem to be caught in great numbers outside of river mouths.
That's only because on the Columbia, the "mouth of the Rivers are all "sanctuaries", so that means that there is NO GILL NETTING or Commercial fishing at all! But when you look at last years commercial fishery on the Columbia when WDFW "observers" were "placed on" the commercial boats, there was a huge catch of steelhead.

Last year alone (2002) during the tangle net fishery, the nets intercepted more steelhead than the targeted hatchery-origin spring chinook. Of the 20,900 steelhead caught in this fishery 12,400 were wild fish. Estimates of mortality, both immediate and post-release, are between 2,400 and 6,100 threatened, wild winter steelhead, representing between 5 and 15% of the entire run.

So how in the devil can you tell us;
Quote:
As far as the commercial harvest of steelhead, the commercials are required to list all salmonid species--steelhead just don't seem to be caught in great numbers outside of river mouths.
????

If you compare a tangle net to the regular nets that they use for gill netting the coho, they look almost identical. That's WHY they catch so many steelhead! beathead


Only just in the last couple of years did the commercial boys start counting the steelhead in there nets! That's only because they now have "observer's" placed on board. Before that, they had two choices! 1) They had to through them back; or 2) they were sold illegally! Oh yea, I forgot about their "honor system" that they claimed they used!

That is why there is NO RECORDS of the commercial catching of steelhead!

Cowlitzfisherman
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Cowlitzfisherman

Is the taste of the bait worth the sting of the hook????