Grandpa, I respectfully disagree with some of your assertions. Let's start with mortality. As someone posted earlier, the conscientious C&R guys like you, me, and Steve who strive to take the utmost care of released fish are outnumbered by a factor of at least 5:1 by the guy out there just lookin' for meat..... most of those guys aren't looking for a fin until the fish is in the boat, flopping on the deck. Once that fish is heaved out of the water with its full weight thrashing against abrasive mesh, half the slime and scales are gone. The abrasive boat deck takes care of much of what remains. Those fish are 100% dead even if they swim away with vigor. That magnitude of slime and scale loss virtually guarantees that fish will succumb to overwhelming infection long before it ever sees a spawning bed! Do the math, and weight the average of 5 guys with 100% release mortality and one guy with 10% release mortality.... you will get 85%. If anything, I am conservative with my estimate of 60-80%.

Even if I am wrong in overstating that mortality, do you honestly believe the "real" mortality is closer to WDFW's 10% than it is to my 60%.

And who was belittling who? As I recall, phishinman cast the first stone.... were you expecting me to let that personal attack go without a rebuttal?

I applaud your personal ethics in using one single point barbless hook in yout pursuit of these fish, but again, you are outnumbered by a factor of at least 100:1 in that department. For the overwhelming majority of bait fishers, tandem octopus/salmon hooks are still king out there. And there is still a small but obstinate coalition of guys out there who refuse to pinch their barbs.

I recall in my previous conversations with Mark that the status of Columbia River stocks is the main driving force in setting quotas for the ocean fishery off the WA Coast. Since the habitat for wild Lower Columbia coho has essentially been degraded to the point of no return, that stock is exceedingly unlikely to ever be declared as "recovered". In my mind, that makes it exceedingly unlikely that we will ever have a fishery purposely targeting Lower Columbia wild coho wherever that stock is expected to be present. The other thing that supports that conclusion is that WDFW has so heavily invested itself headlong into the concept of "selective" fishing to maximally utilize all exploitable stocks. Hey it keeps the license-buying public happy while WDFW pats themselves on the back for promoting "responsible" salmon recovery. Hell with the "reduced" sports impact, they can justify more openers for the commercials as well. Everybody wins.... that is, except the fish.