Dear smalma et al,

Sorry, no connections to the group you speak of. I agree with locust, however, that it has been way too long that some of the green groups have been directing alot of this effort, and it's time to really examine their agendas as well. Come on, those of us that fish for fun really should be as objective as possible about these types of issues, and not be led blindly by agendas on either side.

That said, I want to adress the issue of inadvertant hatchery selection that smalma brought up. True, hatchery survivals are typically higher than that of a redd, but many times redd survival is another set of random events that has nothing to do with fitness. More importantly, we seem to forget in this argument that a majority of the life of a hatchery fish, however pampered at the beginning of its life, will be spent in the "real ocean" competing for resources. If an animal is capable of surviving, finding prey, avoiding predators, returning to its natal environment, avoiding more predators (especially those mesh net types, don't get me started on that one!) and succesfully reproducing, I'd suggest that selective forces have played an important role far beyond the availability of pelleted food for 25% or less of its life. Don't get me wrong, I believe in wild fish, too. But, given the choice between attempting to allow a river system to try and recover naturally after the population has crashed to a point that genetic drift has compounded the equation, or trying to aid (carefully) in the recover of that population, I'd go with the latter.

I must say, I'm very impressed with the level of scientific comprehension on this site!