CFM,

I guess this would be my speculation...if there are any wild steelhead left in the Cowlitz, they would be March, or later, fish, what with the zillions of hatchery fish that mainly have been running from Thanksgiving through January.

My guess is that there probably aren't any, or aren't very many, wild fish left. If there is going to be any natural production, though, it would make sense to try it with the later arriving fish so as to avoid overlapping "recovery fish" with "harvest fish", i.e., the "Boeing" run of fish that run during Christmas vacation.

Here are the two scenarios...

1. There are fish put there from the hatcheries for harvest, and that's it.

or

2. There are fish put there for harvest in the early season, and others which are allowed to seed the upper river for natural production in the later season.

I haven't yet read the stuff you were kind enough to send my way regarding the Cowlitz FERC relicensing agreement, but I'm guessing that this is the bone of contention.

Under either scenario above, there is the same amount of fish produced. Under #1 there are more fish produced at the hatcheries for harvest. Let's call that "X" amount of fish.

Under #2, the hatcheries produce, say, .75X amount of fish, and the other .25 X are to be created "naturally" in the upper river.

All things being equal, #1 produces more fish for harvest, while #2 produces the same amount of fish, but 25% less for harvest. This assumes that those .25X actually are produced in the natural river. This also would save Tacoma Power the money it would cost to produce the adcditional 25% of the fish.

Is this what you were talking about last week?

Fish on...

Todd.