Salama as a kid i grew up fishing for trout wiht bait sea runs in particular so from personal experience i know that mortaility is high.

as an adult I have fished for steelhead and with the manner of presentations i use the fish are ALWAYS and i mean 100% of the time hooked in the corner of the jaw or the tip of the nose absolutely no exceptions!!

now from that ai look at the studies done in BC that suggest a 3% mortality of steelhead caught on single barbless artificial. I actually read through the study and see where the researchers stated that the vast majority of mortality was due to hook related injuries causing organ damage and sever blood loss. neither of these is possible with a fish hooked in the tip of the nose or the corner of the jaw therefore it stands to reason that my catch and release mortality is considerably lower than 3%..
Now were i to use bait or trebel hooks on fish that I planned to release i guarentee my hooking mortaility would go up.

So when in the past i have said " catch and release properly done" I mean single barbless hooks no bait..

also note that the canadian studies showed most mortality was due to blood loss due to hooking injury. NOT from handeling the fish...

Well i gotta go take my GF and her kids trout fishing going to a stocker lake to drown some power bait