It's not under the radar...it's part of the research. There's stuff out there from Canada and from here in Washington talking about the effectiveness of CnR as a management tool that provides opportunity without harming the productivity of the target stock.

I'm not sure which river the study you quoted was conducted on, but similar studies have been done all over the place...the broodstock collection fisheries are the most obvious places to look.

In those the fish were not just caught by hook and line, but were stuffed into a PVC tube and left sitting in the shallows. Somebody came along at the end of the day and collected all the tubes, brought them to the hatchery, and the fish are placed into cement raceways...to swim in circles...until they are ripe.

They are weighed, measured, poked, prodded...and when ripe, hand spawned. The mortality on those fish is minimal...very, very low.

If a steelhead can survive that experience, you'd think it would be a piece of cake to survive being caught on hook and line, and then released back into the river...and it is a piece of cake.

Like I said, CnR as a management policy does not reduce the productivity of the target stock...like I said repeatedly, and so has Salmo g., and so has Smalma, here and on the other sites.

I'm just one dude, fishing some, catching some, and releasing the wild ones...if that's "excessive", sorry...but I don't think it is, and I sincerely doubt that I'm responsible for the destruction of any fish runs.

Fish on...

Todd