Zen Leecher - you are right - ask 10 fishermen and you will probably get 12 opinions. Here is the issue for me - please stay with me, I'm going to go pretty far afield but I will come back, I promise.

Fishing is one of the activities that confers upon the fisher "expert" status when we are good enough or lucky enough to catch the fish we were targeting when we were targeting it. What a lot of "experts" (including me) do not get is that just because you can catch a fish, it does not make you knowledgeable about habitat, hatchery interaction, effect of hydro, Wild Steelhead Release, etc. And I think that plays into the arguement we are having now.

Everyone on this board knows that I am in support of the WSR moratorium. I would like it to be permanent. I would like it to apply to all salmonids in our waters. I go out of my way to not fish rivers where the predominant fish is wild steelhead. I don't like the idea of having hooking mortality just to get my string stretched. Although I own a fly rod, I very rarely fly fish and have never thought about this issue as fly guys vs. gear chuckers. My point is this:

Steelhead in this state, both hatchery and wild, are having problems in returning sufficient numbers to reproduce themselves. It is a huge problem for Wild fish because the survival percentages from egg to smolt are so low. I do not believe that the hatchery practices currently in use provide an acceptable safety net in case the wild fish goes extinct. Therefore, every wild fish and the genetic cargo they carry is very valuable. We know that straying is a common occurence for steelhead. If we have to restart the wild fish population in the entire state from fish that grew up and returned to the Bogy for instance, we need to have that option available. Or we need to create hatcheries that preserve genetic diversity and offer the closest possible alternative to the wild fish. I don't think we are there yet, maybe others disagree.

WSR is the best option available for dealing with harvest while still allowing fishing opportunity. I think that it is clear that it is not the magic bullet. It is also clear that we have not found the magic bullet to get the tribes to stop harvesting the way they are currently harvesting. We have huge problems with Habitat. In some places, we have huge issues with Hydro. Only a coordinated approach to all of these factors will insure the survival of the wild steelhead. There are huge political, social, and cultural issues surrounding especially the Habitat and Hydro problems. They will not be solved overnight. My hope is that with WSR we will keep some wild fish around until we have found the will to attack the other, bigger problems.

This is all old ground folks, but if the Commission accepts Forks' petition, then we will go beyond the process of enacting the moratorium to discussing the validity of enacting a moratorium. I would hope that all sides could come to the table with the idea of preserving the wild steelhead as the most important and central point. If we as a sportfishing community can do that, then we will have the basis for common agreement and common actions. If not, we will fiddle while Rome burns. The distractions of us vs. them, fly vs. gear, Urban vs. Rural just strokes our egos (our expert egos?) and doesn't get us to where we need to be. And maybe we will decide that the wild fish is not worth the cost of saving. That would fill me with sadness and guilt at the legacy that I leave behind.

If you have got to this point, thanks for listening.