Dave -
In spite of what AnutyM may believe there are holes large enough in my knowledge to drive any hatchery truck or fishing boat one may wish through! (LOL). However I'll try to give you my assessment based on that limited knowledge of what may be behind the lack of positive response to harvest reductions on our salmon and steelhead populations.

The short answer is that have experienced reduced capacity and productivity of our rivers. Let's use Puget Sound chinook as an example (may be a little less emotion). Habitat modeling seems to indicate that throughout Puget Sound the capacity of our river's habitat to produce chinook has been reduce by at least half (Skagit) on the best rivers to substantial more than a factor of 10 (Nooskack). In the case of chinook this reduction in habtiat has occurred in the both the freshwater (spawning and rearing areas) as well as the estuary. Estuaries are an especially important componment in chinook production as it provides habitat for additional rearing once the freshwater has been filled to capacity - if chinook can find either freshwater or estuary rearing habitats so that they can grow to that 2.5 to 3 inch before entering the marine waters their survival increases greatly. A quick look at the modeling on the Snohomish for example shows that about 1/2 of the loss has been in freshwater areas and 1/2 in the estuary (this mix varies greatly between river systems).

Historical a pair of spawning chinook were much more productive than they are today. For example it is believed that at low abundance chinook historically produced 15 to 18 returning adults per spawner. Today that return per spawner (or productive) has been greatly reduced until in places like the main stem North Fork Stillaguamish or North Fork Nooksack it is down around 1. That is given what the fish have to work with they are at near the river's capacity to natural grow fish. Even our best Puget Sound rivers are at less than 1/2 of their historic productivity.

Another major factor has been low survival conditions. That can be either freshwater (poor egg survival due to flooding for example) or poor marine conditions (reflect in smolt to adult survival). I realize that many consider that placing blame on such factors is a "cop-out" however the impacts are real. Here is a hypothical steelhead example on how low marine survival afters the popualtion.

Let's assume that after solving all the problems (WSR and no nets) we have a winter steelhead population at carrying capacity. Lets further assume that the freshwater portion of that capacity allows for the production of 100,000 smolts (makes the math easy) and for this example lets assume that the capcaity is fixed (we are not having floods, droughts, etc). We know that smolt to adult survival varies however a Puget Sound average might be around 10%. That means
we would expect 10,000 spawners and they all are needed to produce the 100,000 smolts. Notice what happens when the marine survival falls below the average - the current rates appear to be in the 3 to 5% range. Instead of getting 10,000 adults we get only 3 to 5,000 adults which in turn produce less than 100,000 smolts. If the low survival conditions persist for any length of time (currently in the Puget Sound area we have been in those conditions for a number of years) the population will continue decline until some new equilibrium for the population is reach (atr some fraction of that under average conditions). The decline will continue regardless of what actions we may or may not take. Though it is fair to say that some actions -such as no fishing mortalities - would buffer the decline some.

The opposite of poor survival would greater than average, say in the 15 to 20% range. Obviously the populations can "bounce" quickly under such conditions. That appears to be what happened in the early to mid 1980s. The wild runs we saw in that period which many of us thought were the result of the "wild fish" management changes insititute at the time and we could expect those good times to continue well into the future were in fact the product of acceptable marine survival conditions. It is unknown when we may see those conditions again. However it would be safe to say that the mid-1980s were the good old days for Puget Sound wild steelhead in your an my life times.

I'm sure this is way too long but I hope it helped some. If you wish some clarification or have additional questions I'll try address them.

Tight lines
S malma