Let’say for the sake of argument that I agree with the statement above.
After reading what has been written in this thread how can you both still agree that
“the only benefit of LCR commercial selective fishing is more commercial harvest”?

http://www.cbbulletin.com/393123.aspx

“It is estimated that standard mesh gill-nets cause a post release mortality of 30 percent for steelhead and 30 percent for spring chinook salmon. The estimates for smaller mesh tangle nets are 14.7 percent for spring chinook and 18 percent for steelhead. In the fall the estimated steelhead mortality is 66 percent when gill-nets with 8-inch mesh are deployed and 59 percent with 9-inch mesh.”

Apparently you two could care less about steelhead, but for those of us that do care included those that live in Idaho, this is what it would mean.

Non treaty commercials have to release steelhead. In the worst case scenario in the fall that would be for every 1000 steelhead gill netters release as bycatch--- 660 would die and 340 would live.
In the spring with standard gill net gear those numbers would be --700 would live and 300 would die per 1000.

An added benefit fishing selective gear would be if at 1% speculative (since that number hasn’t been established yet) ---10 would die and 990 would live out of 1000 released.

So between 1% & 5% selectively caught = 10 to 50 would die selectively per 1000--- VS--- 300 spring gill netting or 660 fall gill netting per 1000 steelhead released.

That represents a large differential between selective gear and gillnets.

Other bycatch like sturgeon would benefit as live capture and released by selective gear methods also.

We could have used real numbers to figure this out if the gill netters hadn't allegedly cooked the books .