Is your specific stance that unless a run is healthy enough for harvest that it shouldn't be fished?
Yes.
More importantly, it isn't my opinion that will matter. The opinion of John Q. Public will matter. There are hundreds , maybe thousands of people statewide that work on enhancement and habitat issues that don't fish. Let's not even discuss businesses who resent being held accountable for salmon and steelhead "problems" and sooner or later, they're going to go after sport fishing as another cause of declines.
It's already that way. At this point the logging, agriculture, commercial real estate, manufacturing, etc are expecting the burden of management to fall on the sport fishermen. Next in line are the commercial guys (with a loss of a complete industry in some cases I might add!), followed roughly and in no particular order by NO ONE!
Logging practices are forced to do studies on raparian area and wetland buffer zones. This usually amounts to a pitiful buffer (either 100' or 100 yards) of wood that isn't worth a damn any how.
Agriculture talks about how they have to forgo their irrigation rights, all the while rivers run low and hot
I can continue to go on and on, but the reality is, the sport fishermen *HAVE* fallen on their swords. Of all the PS rivers only *2* are open after Feb 28th. If you feel that further sacrifice from our fraternatiy is going to solve things, the go for it. But at this point while we are viewed as direct consumers of the resource, our impacts have been minimized as much as can be expected without extinguishing a complete recreational arm.....
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