Well, common sense would say that every female steelhead taken from a system would take 3000-3500 eggs from the gravel.

But then Kevin has a strong arguement with the Oregon Coastal numbers.

Our SW WA trib numbers have been in the tank for all but the Grays and Kalama and ironically those two have hatcheries and one has a falls with a side channel that they can sort what goes into the upper river and the other has the hatchery on a tributary so "most" of the hatchery fish are out of the main system... Ours have been in the tank since the late 80's.

Another system that has recovered well which I find very interesting is the SF of the Toutle since it was all but wiped out in 1980 with the eruption and it get's hatchery summer steelhead plants.

In my eyes, there's a lot of directions the fingers can be pointed. Hatchery fish mixing in, nets, habitat, predation, harvest, etc. But one that always seems to hold true for all the species of salmonids is when the ocean is in a downward cycle so are our fish returns....

The odd thing about the Olympic Penninsula is back in the 80's-90's there were great #'s of wild steelhead that returned.. It was an area that most people had to travel long distances to get to and it wasn't until that time frame that it became publicly known that the area harbored some of the biggest steelhead in the state.

I know when I first went up there in the early 90's there was some amazing fishing. One thing that amazed me was how far behind the talent levels were with most of the people we came across. I guess what I'm trying to say is since the early 90's the general public has become a lot better fisherman.

In the recent years I've been up there I've never seen an area with so much pressure and pressure from a lot of "great" fisherman. It reminds me of spring chinook fishing in SW WA. To me, there's no way runs of fish can support that amount of angling be it harvest/catch and release. As much as we don't want to face it, we are our own enemy.

I would be interested in what sort of run sizes rivers like the Dean and some others that you have to fly into to access. If those runs are declining then harvest or fishing pressure isn't the answer...

Keith