Stew,

Let's get one thing straight. I'm not here to build a relationship with my guide friends. I have a passion, just as everyone in teh fishing world does. I'm not sure if the broodstock program is right or not. I need more time to look at it and see if it is truely the reaason for depressed returns of wild fish.

The one thing I don't see is.......

An improvement of wild fish populations on river where no hatchery influence is had. Let's look at this seriuosly.

The main Nehalem.
It has been 15 years or more that any hatchery steelhead have been planted in this river. What kind of improvemnet have these wild winter fish made from that point in time til now? From an anglers point of view (MHO) it has good years and it has bad. Almost an exact duplicate of the Wilson or Nestucca river. The one difference is the Nehalem doesn't get the same fishing pressure as the hatchery streams.

How about a river like Drift Creek
It gets 0 plants and has a good wild run of all species, yet not as good as it could have. I have yet to see or catch any strays in this stream, but some years are great for wild steelhead and others are poor.like last year.

There are many streams that get no hatchery plants of winter steelhead and have little to no outside interfierence or habitat loss, yet these model wild steelhead streams don't have the runs that they should have.

I'm not saying the broodstock program is good for wild fish at all, but i'm not seeing our runs go to hell because of them. If the broodstock program is the problem with the wild populations, then why do rivers with no BS programs have declining populations too.