By Wayne Kruse
Outdoor Writer

The state Fish and Wildlife Commission's decision earlier this week to impose a two-year, statewide moratorium on the retention of wild-stock steelhead seems to have raised as many questions as it answered.

Beginning April 1, it will be against the law to keep a steelhead with an intact adipose fin anywhere in Washington. The ban runs for the next two years. The commission, a citizen oversight group appointed by the governor, also adopted specific rules for releasing, without boating, such fish.

Commissioner R.P. Van Gytenbeek of Seattle initiated the discussion about the release of wild steelhead by calling for a permanent ban on retention. That didn't fly with the rest of the commission, nor did a motion for a six-year moratorium. The two-year ban passed on a 5-3 vote.

"In this case, I think a half a loaf is better than no loaf at all," Van Gytenbeek said. "A lot of people in this state are concerned about the decline of our wild steelhead stocks and I think a moratorium gets us started down the right path."

Commission chairman Will Roehl of Bellingham did not share that view, noting that the Fish and Wildlife Department is working on a comprehensive steelhead management plan tailored to specific rivers and specific stocks.

"I can't support banning retention of wild steelhead on rivers where runs are healthy and returns are strong," Roehl said. "I don't think this broad-brush action is warranted."

Because wild-steelhead release has been in effect for years on the vast majority of state rivers, the new regulation won't have a widespread impact.

"There are only about a dozen rivers where a limited retention fishery for wild steelhead still exists," said state spokesman Craig Bartlett in Olympia, "and all those are on the Olympic Peninsula, except for the Green."

The most popular of those rivers include the Quillayute, Bogachiel, Sol Duc, Calawah, and Hoh, all near Forks, where a limit of one wild fish per day - with a maximum of five per year - has been in effect.

Bob Gooding, owner of Olympic Sporting Goods in Forks, said he can live with the situation either way.

"Personally, I haven't kept a wild steelhead for 10 years," he said. "On the other hand, I haven't heard any hard science behind the decision to close it. Will the commercials (tribal fishermen netting under treaty rights) go along? How does the state plan to enforce it? With one agent to cover deer, elk and fish in 2,200 square miles here?"

Said Bartlett: "As of (Tuesday), our people weren't entirely sure what the tribes would do, or what the law would say about the commercial aspect of the regulation change."

Everett resident, avid angler and president of the Everett Steelhead and Salmon Club Jim Brauch, said the impact locally won't be much.

"We've released wild steelhead on our local rivers for a long time, so it won't make any difference here," he said. "And I never kill a wild steelhead. But I wouldn't want to say to the guy next to me that he must release a fish that may be the biggest one he's landed in his life, or maybe the only one he's hooked that year, or is perhaps his son or daughter's first-ever steelhead."

Brauch said the blanket approach was a mistake, and that the state should be allowed to manage on a river-by-river basis.

"I don't think anyone has proven the catch-and-keep fishery on the Peninsula is having a negative impact on the strength of the wild runs," he said.

Major groups lobbying for the moratorium included the Federation of Fly Fishers, Trout Unlimited and the Wild Steelhead Coalition, Bartlett said.

"As for the science behind it," he said, "commissioner Russ Cahill (in Olympia) told me it was pretty much a matter of whose biologists you believed. Our (state) people told him that even on a down cycle in the natural flux of things, we're easily meeting our wild steelhead spawning escapement goals on those (Peninsula) rivers. Biologists for the proponent groups, on the other hand, told him the runs are declining, period. With no clear consensus, he said he was forced to vote conservatively for the resource."

Bartlett said that in two years the agency's new steelhead management plan should be finished, and that the divisive issue undoubtedly will be revisited.