Quote from Double Haul: "if the early component of the (Sol Duc) run is so depressed to augment it with a broodstock program why are we still allowing wild steelhead kill on the early portion of the run?"

Rich - You probably already know that about 60% of the Sol Duc sport harvest of hatchery steelhead occured during the Nov-Jan time frame in the 2001-2002 season. Only around 21% of the sport harvest of wild steelhead occured during those three months. Incidentally that is an increase of more than 20% above the 18.5% of the wild steelhead total harvest for the same three months of the 1998-1999 season. Are you suggesting that all fishing be shut down during that period to prevent the take of the early component that is unavoidable with any recreational fishing?

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We can whine about the over harvest by the Quinault tribal netters but the numbers tell the real story. For the 2001-2002 season the total tribal take of winter steelhead on the Humptulips was 242 fish, and all of them were harvested in Dec(161) & Jan(81). Considering the time frame it is likely the few of these were wild fish.

By contrast, the sport harvest for 2001-2002 was 778 fish, 752 hatchery and 26 wild. Only 8 of the sport kill of wild fish were during Dec & Jan during which time 648 hatchery fish were harvested.

The tribal and sport kills of winter steelhead on the Humptulips during the 2001-2002 season were about 242 (24% of the total) and 778 (76% of the total) respectively. It seems that the sport take was three times as great as the tribal take.

On the Chehalis the tribal harvest was 1,480 and the sport harvest was 8,018.

On the Quinault the tribal harvest was 10,124 and the sport harvest was 525. I wonder why?

On the Queets the tribal harvest was 4,019 and the sport harvest was 1,855 (1,500 of them on the Salmon). I wonder why?

On the Quillayute the tribal harvest was 9,598 and the sport harvest was only 7,260 due to restrictions on wild harvest.

Just some numbers for the record. It goes both ways.