This thread, another outstanding example of the fractious, ineffective recreational fishing constituency.

Because fishery issues are often complex, everyone gets to pick the special case of their choice and show how the limiting factor mentioned by another member in reference to another watershed or set of watershed and "prove" how right they are and how wrong the other person is. With that kind of sideways, or dare I say half-assed reasoning, is it any wonder we consistently fail to assemble effective coalitions?

BTW, even the Chehalis basin is habitat limited. Sure, most of its chinook are harvested outside WA state, but those fish are part of the basin's productivity. It's just that the benefits of that production accrue elsewhere instead of here. The basin, as far as WDFW and QIN know or assert, still makes, or almost makes the chinook escapement goal most of the time. Just because there are not a lot of fish available for sport fishing does not mean a basin is producing at less than its potential, it usually means that somebody else is catching those fish.

Many readers here continue to make the false assumption that if only more fish were allowed to escape to spawn, then overall production of that run would increase. For those few populations that are actually being over-harvested, this is true. But for the majority of populations it would just mean more fish would spawn while production remained approximately the same. Until everyone gets on the same page about how salmonid populations work, these discussions will continue to be little more than a waste of time and bandwidth.

I said above that even the Chehalis basin, where we appear by all indicators to have serious harvest problems, is habitat limited. I meant that in an historical context. How can a basin that formerly produced far more than a million coho and a quarter million chinook not be habitat limited today? You could stop all fish harvests for the next 50 years, and production wouldn't recover to previously witnessed levels. The reason is less habitat, and habitat with less productivity and capacity than before. But for a few select cases, habitat is always gonna' be your limiting factor (habitat includes the ocean in case Kevin Lund is reading). Over harvest is an important issue, but it's nothing like Jerry and others assert. Man, this is like spitting into the wind.

BTW BD, don't ya' dare stay home on Saturday. See red.

Sg