Wait Todd,
Are you saying that you believe that these fish will be able to establish themselves naturally? I believe you did. ***"They're supposed to be spawning naturally, so they can't be clipped." **** But how is this possible. I am sure you have stated over and over it isn't. I can vaguely see you worrying about dumping a ton of smolt in a river and competing with the very few wild steelhead there, but... Do you really think that the few steelhead that are there are all the system can support. Is it really that sterile. And if it is, couldn't the dumping of carcasses and natural carcasses help with this?
But lets go further into your logic. Under the premises you presented the fish will establish themselves and then will be so sucessfull they will overwhelm few the wild steelhead that are there.
Since originally there were salmon here, wouldn't returning the salmon and eradicating the non-native trout be make more sense under your line of thinking? I am a firm believer that natural straying occurs and is benefical to the overall health of a run. Since there appears to be no native stock to use, using the lower river stocks may not be as bad of an idea as you represent it to be.
The only arguements I can see that you may have is that they will continue to supplement this run only with hatchery smolts or that they will then gill net these fish and take listed steelhead as by-catch. To this I have no answer and am not versed well enough on run timing and future harvest plans to comment, ...but,... under the same line of thinking, isn't it possible that the fishery on the non-native trout in the upper river has as much or more of an effect then the tribal fishery would.
I have a hard time being against the attempt to return a naturally occuring run. Especially if the hope is that the run could be self sustaining.