I haven't got a chance to read through the whole thread, but while I wait for my car reservations page to load, I thought I'd bring something up to GP in FnP's defense.

Coho have a terrible mortality rate. Studies in the Susitna drainage have shown that bait caught fish do die roughly 80% of the time. Even 50% + of the fish that got caught in the fish wheel pens die ... most other species have no trouble.

C&R is a good thing, but not always. This is one of the reasons that even ol' BOb will not allow C&R'ing of a coho on our trips here in AK ... we sell short trips, run several a day, and harvest every fish that is landed. A different philosophy than we normally subscribe to, but a salt or estuarine coho is a different fish too