I fail to see by the article posted by Aunty M how the smelt were "hammered" by the ocean commercials. The by catch numbers in the shrimp nettery dropped off, but the entire fishery was in sharp decline. To lay no blame on the in-river netters(commercials) is the same as saying the tribal netters are not doing any damage to the OP steelhead runs because they are "only' taking their 1/2 of the allowable harvest. Why do they continue to allow ANY commercial netting of the smelt run in the rivers when it is in such a rapid decline. To absolve Tacoma Power of any blame for any of the fish declines in the Cowlitz system is also very wrong in my opinion as one who fished the system pre-dams and knows well what it was like back then.
I do not agree with Mr. Barnett on one point, and that is the theory about the river cleaning itself out in subsequent years after the eruption. There was such a massive amount of silt and debris that if something had not been done to help with the flow, we would be seeing a very different Cowlitz River flow today.