Regarding the better in river Skagit king fishing during the 1950s and 60s. Salmo is correct in that those were there because they were not being caught by another user group. If you will recall the biggest chunk of the harvest is currently in Canadian waters - in the 1950s and 60s that effort - both the troll effort as well as the sport fleet was much smaller thus moer fish got back to our waters.

Cupo -
I can understand your comments but consider for a momment. Many have said that despite runs that at times exceed 20,000 wild steelhead even the Quillayute can not support harvest of steelhead. The wild chinook summer/fall forecasts for 2004 (see WDFW web page - fishing - forecasts under North of Falcon) for the Quillayute and the Hoh were 6,491 and 4,240 respectively. The Hoh spring forecast was 1,450. For wild coho in 2004 the forecasts were 21,212 and 8,100 respectively.

Many of the same adrent wild steelhead release supportors seem to have no problem with bonking wild salmon for those two systems. It is also good to remember that unlikely most steelhead fisheries most of our wild salmon fishing impacts occur in mix stock areas - like the ocean. If the argument is that small run sizes make the resource fragile as you seem to indicate in your Skagit coho comments then how can an angler concern about wild salmonid resources fish for and even consider keeping an unclipped (wild) chinook or coho in the Quillayute, Hoh or the ocean?

The wild chinook run in those two systems are smaller than the recent wild steelhead runs in the Skagit and the Hoh wild coho run isn't much larger.

I'm sorry but those wild steelhead release at all cost supportors that turn around and kill wild chinook or coho salmon in the above situations or condone the taking of those fish lose their credibility as a wild fish advocates with me!

I realize that the above comment is heresy but so be it.

Tight lines
S malma