WOW, thats what we have to do is stop fishing for wild steelhead and all of our troubles will evaporate.I fish this pristine little river on the the north end of puget sound, that has been closed down for wild steelhead retention for as long as i have been around, and the fishing there has not gotten any better. Not only that, this year the hatchery run sucked! very few made it back and the ones that did were smaller than usual. SO i guess i must be missing the point of the wild fish closure as i have not seen one bit of difference on the stilliquamish.
I think that this ruling is about special interests,some office quarter-backs think that everyone (including the tribes,RIGHT) will appreciate the spirit of the new moratorium.The tribes will, all the way to the gill nets full of wild fish, to the guides, some of whom want this to keep the rest of the publice off of their rivers and fish. Or for some guides it may be that they don't retain wild fish( or want their customers to retain wild fish) because it COUNTS AGAINST THEIR annual wild retention, thus limiting their ability to continue fishing the wild runs, and maybe it is just another way to divide the sports fishermen to keep us from seeing what is really going on behind the scenes.