Todd -
An interesting topic.

First you as part of your reason to keep fish you said "Last year's dismal hatchery winter run return on the coast proves that if people can't catch enough hatchery steelhead to fulfill their freezer filling needs, they will keep wild fish if legal to do so."

I remember the discussion we had on this site regarding that issue and the position that many took that reflected your position. However the creel checks from this year seems to continue to indicate that anglers still want to keep wild fish regardless of how many hatchery fish are around. In the 2002/03 season the anglers reported through the Janaury 19 keeping 74 out of 86 wild fish caught or 86%. In the same period they kept 274 out of 294 hatchery fish caught or 93%. This year through the Janaury 18 clearly the checks show the hatchery fishing much better. The anglers kept 88 out of 119 wild fish caught or 74% while keeping 1,159 out of 1,398 hatchery fish or 82%. With more fish available the anglers appear to be more willing to release fish with the % of kept down about 10% in 2003/04 from that in 2002/03. However it still appears that the majorit of anglers fishing the Quillayute still prefer to bonk some wild fish.

To the topic at hand -
When the first catch and release season were put in place in the Puget Sound region the hatchery fish were not marked. Believe that the first year that the majority of the hatchery fish were marked in the Puget Sound region were released in 1983. By the mid-1980s when there were easily identifiable hatchery fish (either late winter hatchery or early summers) as suggested by others the retention of the hatchery fish was prohibited in part for the easy of enforcement. However another factor considered at the time was that if the anglers knew going into the fishery that all steelhead must be released they were more accepting of the CnR philosophy and tended to handle the fish better, especially when they were not checking to see if it were hatchery or wild.

In the case of the Sauk/Skagit example currently there would be few un-spawned hatchery fish available in the March/April time frame. In the last decade or so the trapping information from the hatchery shows that the hatchery winter females (Chamber's type) have completed spawning by the end of the February and summers are no longer planted in the basin.

Tight lines
Smalma