Wntrrn,

We're not telling you to STFU or asking you to do extensive research of any kind. Because it's been discussed so many times, anyone who reads this bulletin board regularly has already seen the information necessary to make an informed opinion. The proximate cause of depressed steelhead runs in PS (excluding HC) is poor marine, especially early marine, survival. That has been reported here more times than I can remember.

That's not to say that the roughly 200 - 400 wild steelhead (and that may be high) caught in tribal nets, or the harvest of sardines off the mouth of the Columbia are doing the Skagit steelhead any good. However, to introduce that sort of evidence as the cause of the Skagit closure is grade school logic. It's stupid in fact when the writer has better quality information at hand. That is why I jumped on a few of the posters in this thread.

It's fine to criticize the fish agencies - when you know WTF you're talking about. I do so often, as do others. But when the criticisms employ nothing better than grade school logic, or the layman's common sense as described by Farmed It in this thread, the speaker or writer identifies himself and uninformed or ignorant and loses any credibility they might have had with the managers who develop the policies and regulations.

As for parity, well, life ain't fair. The existence of US v WA is evidence of that. Some are complaining that the Skagit nets are presently catching some wild steelhead. They know that because of reports of sport caught wild steelhead this month. Those same writers conveniently ignore that some of those sport caught steelhead are subject to whatever rate of incidental mortality applies. And the tribes know it. Do you really think they would be persuaded to stop targeting the hatchery steelhead presently available just to avoid catching a relatively small number of wild fish? Especially when the sport fishery is out there doing exactly the same thing - albeit at a lower mortality rate? Refer again the first sentence in this paragraph - life ain't fair.

I strongly doubt that if all PP BB members review the same information that we would all reach the same conclusion because we already do review much of the same information and reach different conclusions. My contribution to this thread isn't creating any unity, so I should probably STFU.

Sg