Most of our clients are fly fishing for coho and they are in freshwater. We do some spoons and spinner fishing, but these fish are in freshwater and they seem to handle the C&R very well. Yes, we see a few coho that do not make it from hook mortality. We use barbless hooks that seems to help out in this fishery. The shear number of fish in this system has been bery stable for many years. In fact this season, according to some of our clients who have been fishing it for 12 years have never seen so many coho as this last year. So to answer your question. Yes, i'm sure there is a C&R mortality in our freshwater fishery. Yes, Nick and I went into the tidewater area for part of the video and caught and released 30-50 fish that day. if the mortality was 40% then you can conclude that 12-20 of those didn't make it. With three of us filming and fishing during that time frame, we were allowed 5 fish each, of which we didin't keep any in the video. While it may not be the best for those fish, we only fished the tidal area for a few minutes and then moved upriver where they are less likely to be stressed from hook and release. Every fishery has a mortality. We are no different than any Lodge in Alaska. We promote catch and release. The fishery itself runs strong into October and even November when nobody is fishing for them as the weather is too nasty. Our water temperatures are quite a bit colder up there than the bath waters we have here, and those mortality rates are much lower. If people come to Alaska to catch fish, there is a certain percentage of fish that are going to die from C&R. It is no differert on the Togiak than on the Kenai, other than the amount of fish present. Last year we may have has as many as 150-200,000 coho return to the Togiak.

We fish 8 hours a day and release most of the fish caught.