Geo,

Are the Wild Steelhead Tags river specific? I guess they'd have to be, or every tag sold could be used on one river, or a few, and that would mess up the intent to put the allowable impacts where they are intended to belong.

Would there be some sort of lottery to get one?

The tag would have to have some sort of a jaw clamp on it, that can only be used once, so that the successful fisherman can fill out the tag and clamp it on the jaw of his/her fish, and must be mailed in within, say, fifteen days after harvesting their fish. Any tag issued via lottery must be returned, filled or not, or you're out of the lottery in the future.

Part of easing enforcement would be to make the penalties for poaching wild steelhead commensurate with those for poaching big game...loss of privileges for a set time (longer the better), monetary penalties that hurt, and fines/penalties that really get worse for repeat offenders. This stuff wouldn't directly make enforcement easier, but hopefully very high penalties would be a greater deterrent for the jerks out there that think it's their right to poach wild steelhead.

More suggestions?

Fish on...

Todd