lunch Time -
Looked at the in river sport harvest - see report listed at this site -
http://wdfw.wa.gov/fish/harvest/99sport.htm

Found that for the years 1997 to 1999 the last three years easily available to me (sorry to lazy to do additional work) found that in:

1999 the sport harvest was estimated to have been 884 chums or about 6.97% of the total harvest.

1998 the sport harvest was estimated to have been 2,158 or about 8.58% of the total harvest.

1997 the sport harvest was estimated to have been 583 or 22.76% of the harvest.

The three average was 12.77% of the harvest occurred in the river sport fishery.

Remember that is just the harvest and I would guess that the number of fish released would be an order of magnitude higher. Clearly the sport fishery is having some impact.

Johnny -
I in no way meant to imply that the anglers were targeting spawning steelhead. Rather you and Todd were suggesting that the chum fishery be moved down river to get anglers off the spawning chums. I'm suggesting that if fishing on spawning fish is a concern that adjustments to the CnR steelhead should be considered - Please not I did not suggest that those changes be made but rather asked you how to address your concerns.

I see no reason why management of our wild salmonid resources should not be based on consistent principles. That would apply to either fishing on spawners or runs expected to be underescaped. I find your desire to fish on underescaped chums runs inconsistent with your stance on wild steelhead.

Salmo -
Generally speaking the expected impacts from freshwater fishing is modeled into the expected total impacts for each season.

I share your concern about the willingness of some of our anglers to target a given species even when the season is closed. This type of unethical behavior (at least in my opinion) seems to getting more common. This may be due in part to some anglers and guides willingness to put their own fishing needs above that of the fish. The newbies that Todd referred to see this and accept such behavior as the norm.

Tight lines
S malma