BTW, just out of curiosity, what is your point? I mean, the nets are out of the rivers and we aren't catching wild steelhead in any significant numbers during the height of the run, so what are you after? What are you suggesting auntie? I'm very confused as to why you are arguing that doing habitat protection or restoration is anything but a good thing....
Part of that answer involves most of the same players here but on a different board. It's been pointed out to them several times, it isn't just the habitat. IMO, it's a cop out. As we can see, there is some damn good habitat out there for steelhead and it doesn't seem to make a difference.
If we don't get to the heart of the matter, we'll just keep spending billions on habitat for nothing.
As to ocean factors, if we don't KNOW what the problem is, how can you say we can't do anything about it? With the increased fishing pressures out in the ocean for so many species, how can we say there isn't a serious steelhead bycatch problem with foreign fishing fleets? We do know NW steelhead wind up in foreign markets.
So essentially you're saying that habitat isn't the issue? No one on this board has said that habitat isn't the *ONLY* limiting issue, but rather it is the thing we have the most control over beside sport fishing pressure, and is the MOST important concerning the long term surviability.
Case in point, fishing in international waters is a wild west kind of proposition, and enforcement would be ridiculous to manage. Do you have any good inexpensive ideas on how to deal with it? I don't....
In respect to the ocean issue, we know that it has something to do with a warm/cold cycle, and we are starting to understand that hatchery fish may actually have an adverse affect on ocean survial (both for wild and hatchery returns).
In terms of spending billions, the real cost is the hatchery mitigations that we are doing. In some respect we should have some for the sport fishing aspect of it all, but do you have *any* idea how expensive it is to keep fish making it to the Clearwater? It's absurd, and mostly because of issues we have around habitat and hydro.... Want to save some money? Get rid of some of the huge subsidies we give to a minority population for minimal benefit.
As for the heart of the matter, that's why we use the H's as our mantra, harvest, habitat, hydro, hatcheries... Those are the big things that we can control. Most everything else is an act of god, and personally I don't think I have the power to change that!
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