Let's not overlook some other factors that I think are important:

1) Not only do you have the additional steelhead seeding the river, but thousands and thousands of coho carcasses from the Sol Duc hatchery are dumped in the Quillayute system every year.

2) The upper ends of these rivers have been under selective fishery rules now for a while.

3) A hifgher percentage of anglers along the entire length of river are releasing their catches ... fortunately, as we have seen the shift in traffic to these rivers as other runs fall by the wayside, this fact has allowed the actual harvest to not increase in the smae proportion.

4) Mother Nature keeps these river unfishable for both sporties and nets for failry long stretches here and there ... helping to ensure a number of fish make it up to where they need to be.

While the habitat is certainly in better shape than many other watersheds in the state, I would also like to point out that two of the watersheds along the coast with perhaps the least amount of human impact (Hoh & Queets) have struggled to even make minimum escapement goals for some time.

Lots of exceptions to the rules and lots of finger pointing ... just goes to prove that these runs are difficult to manage and we ought to be more conservative than in the past given the track record of current management strategies.

If we do we don't harvest "enough", who wins? The fish!