Bob, This was a great posting.

No doubt all: "Due to Ocean Conditions and other unknown and / or uncontrollable factors"... *

*(why dont you have a "douchebag" emoticon that I can insert here?)

I think that it is important to recognize that wild anadromous fish in the Pacific region have evolved throughout many millions of years over a geographically huge area- from California to Alaska and from Russia to Japan- not just in one river system at a time.

The management of wild steelhead and salmon here has focused on "one river run at a time". And they have collapsed each run in exactly that manner- "one by one". Then applying the same methods to other runs they have repeated the same results. These wild fish should have been enjoying far greater protections long ago than they already do now. And I do agree that far too little is being done for them now.

We sportsfishers are indeed a big part of the problem. Especially now that the overall numbers are so low. And some of the so many guides out here on the Olympic Peninsula are approaching wild steelhead fishing in a reckless and ruthless manner. Sickening. Yes, of course the netting is destructive, tragically so. And we have commercial net and longline fishing on the coasts and offshore too. So many natural and unnatural foes for these fish. All we want to do is go fishing, and most of us release wild steelhead anyway.

So we argue over who should be giving up how much, who is to blame etc. Certainly Catch & Release fishing done responsibly is not a major impact. But what if there are not enough fish left for even that low impact activity to be sustainable now? I have yet to find a biologist who can say what the critical low population number is, the "point of no return" number. Of course if they knew this for sure they would have closed all of the fishing by now, the runs would not have tanked, perhaps it shoold have been closed long ago. But instead they continue deal making with all of the "stakeholders". And the harvest continues. And the runs are collapsed or collapsing. WDFW Managers have defended continued harvest of Wild Steelhead on the Quillayute rivers as "sustainable", similarly they have supportd harvest on the Hoh Wild Steelhead runs as well. The last rivers we have with countable wild fish and they are killing them off faster than they can spawn.

The only solution I can see that would be immediatley impactful would be an all-out boycott on wild steelhead fishing of any kind, and heavy social protest and media perssure on the tribes, harvest guides and sports etc, the fish buyers and brokers and seafood resteraunts, chefs etc.

If the sportsfishermen themselves boycotted the WDFW sanctioned Sportsfishing Season on Wild Steelhead it would put them into a terribly embarrassing public position. How would they write that off?

Something radical has to happen!

As if losing the fish isn't radical enough for us?