This too rubs me wrong. I agree they should have done an "emergency opener" like they do "emergency closures" when the numbers just aren't there. Why not open it when the river is plumbed full? I don't get it, the WDFW gains so much during salmon season. Word of mouth travels fast when lots of fish are to be had, lots of mouths mean lots of people buying licenses, tackle, etc... Everyone benifits from "good fishin". I often fish the Kalama for summer runs and springers, that river is set up right. Pretty much, no matter what time of year if it's got a clipped fin, good to great chance it's bonkable if one chooses to. No matter a chinook salmon or a hatchery steelhead, have the choice to retain it. Not so around these parts. Would like to see that change. Another run at it... What about the hatchery fish spawning naturally with wild fish. Most silvers early in the year are clipped, or hatchery raised. We get a late run of hook nose that a better percentage are wild, or un clipped. Maybe I've got this wrong, just seems like that's the way it is, smaller early hatchery fish followed by a good mix, then a good percentage of wild fish vs. hatchery. The reason there was only a small number of fish in the pens at the hatchery was because when they get these early fish they only use a percentage of these fish for egg/sperm takes. The rest of the fish are gone through and the species and sex are taken along with the wanding on the head, then they are tossed into big plastic toats and loaded up into Food Service of America Truck and shipped different places ie. food banks, missions, shelters. They use a larger percentage of the later larger hook noses for their genes. That's my .02 So when you think that you maybe didn't "give" all that much this year, you really did, thousands of pounds of Salmon to the needy.

Harbor-Hog