Let me hit at this one more time....

Wild Winter Steelhead are one of the few fish that get's my blood flowing. I love the chance at that 30 pounder..

But, fact is I don't beleive the gillnets are the demise of our wild winter steelhead. By all means they are a small fraction of the factor but by putting "selective" nets in the LCR I don't see it changing our wild fish #'s that we get by more than 10%. The real problem is being exposed right under our nose, the evidence is just too deep. It's so evident when you look at the few strong runs of wild fish steelhead/salmon, there sure isn't much if any hatchery fish mingling in those systems...

Take the North Fork of the Lewis for example, it has a strong run of LRB's (true wild fall kings). This river hasn't had any hatchery supplementation in 25 or more years, sure it has a handful of Tule strays but that's it.

Take the EF of the Lewis. In my younger years you'd catch 1 or 2 wild summer runs in a season right along the side of the 60-100 hatchery fish you'd catch... Now that they've slowly cut the hatchery plants over the years from 100,000+ to 15,000 smolt in 2009, we catch good #'s of wild summer steelhead there now.

Take the Kalama river, it has almost always met escapement for wild winter steelhead. With a falls that sorts hatchery fish out of the system and let's the wild fish go by to the upper river to spawn.

Take the Grays River, it has almost always met escapement for wild winter steelhead.. It has a hatchery on the West Fork which is a side creek that draws a large # of the hatchery fish from the Grays River....

Take the Wind River which hasn't planted hatchery fish since 2001 (?), it has taken away hatchery plants and now sees great wild #'s which it never used to have when I was younger...

The writing is on the wall. The evidence is being discussed by the higher powers but it's just hard to believe until you really put the pieces of the puzzle together...

Keith