The 2002 commercial fishery targeting hatchery-origin spring chinook was a catastrophe for three stocks of federally listed wild steelhead. Protections afforded to these fish by The Endangered Species Act were disregarded, putting these already beleaguered fish in further jeopardy of extinction….
The Columbia River Compact, the agency charged with running the commercial fishery, is permitted by NOAA Fisheries, the federal entity with jurisdiction over anadromous fish, to take no more than 2% of listed, wild winter steelhead. This number is biologically determined to be the maximum level of harvest that these stocks can sustain.

In 2002 the tangle net fishery 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.