Mike,

It’s hard to add to Todd’s thoughtful and lengthy post, or Smalma’s succinct and perfectly accurate post, but I’ll try.

I think it’s very much worth noting how you, and numerous other anglers see commercial and treaty gillnet fishing as the greatest threat to wild steelhead. I know and work with quite a few fisheries biologists with very extensive experience, and while many, if not most, would agree that commercial and recreational fishing probably does not benefit wild steelhead, not a one believes that non-treaty commercial, recreational, and or treaty net fishing is the greatest threat to wild steelhead. To the last one, we believe it’s habitat degradation. Now, either all fish biologists are wrong, or maybe, just maybe, habitat degradation is a greater threat to wild steelhead than fishing mortality at the levels allowed presently.

Smalma called the hatchery system a crutch. That crutch has become the foundation of our continued fishing. Without the crutch, the Pacific ocean would be closed to salmon fishing, commercial and recreational, year round. The lower Columbia River would never open to fishing (except for URBs), nor would most, and possibly not any, of its tributaries. All Puget Sound rivers would be closed to steelhead fishing, or at least harvest. Puget Sound would offer continued fishing for pink and chum salmon, and coho approximately half the years. The coastal tributaries would offer the most consistent fishing for modest to good runs of steelhead, coho, and chinook, but probably not for long if that was all that was left in our state.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.