Fish Doc, I like the way you think and believe many others on this board do likewise. And in a perfect world.......

That being said, if I am not mistaken, the mandate to WDFW is to preserve, protect and maintain sustainable fisheries, not necessarily recreation. You are correct in your comment about most people thinking that spawners exceeding escapement goals being considered a waste. That is how society looks at it. When society sees a million pinks coming back to the Skagit, they think everything is rosy and that the habitat can't be that bad. Society hears about record numbers of chinook in the Columbia and they think," hey, life is good." Society tells the politicians everything is great, break out the harvest pie. The politicians provide funding for WDFW....

Anyway, I haven't seen up to this point, that society is willing to pay the costs required for significant habitat recovery. It is difficult today to even try to save what we have left. With the general public's current mindset about habitat and harvest combined with the political clout of the non-treaty commercial fishers, then throwing in tribal views on harvest I think that trying to get management of our salmonid stocks based on maximum sustained recreation to be somewhat naive.

But hey Doc, I'm with Ya! In a perfect world.....