Fishnfella I agree with you about bait not being the best thing for the conservation of a fishery. But new anglers have to start somewhere. I'll use myself for example. At this point of my fishing life I'm mostly a catch and release fly-fisher. I progressed to this type of fishing over the years. I don't think the majority of todays fly-fishers caught their first fish on a fly. I started fishing with bait when I was younger. As I matured as a fisherman I wanted to expand my fishing experiences, so I started using lures. Now I fly-fish(not exactly pretty). I think new anglers, no matter what their age should be allowed to make this proggession in put and take lakes.
The four lakes in the Mt. St. Helens area I was refering to were Fawn, Elk, Forest and Haneford. I've seen 20" Brook Trout and 4# cutts come from these lakes. In my opinion if a reduced limit and selective regs were put in place in a couple of these lakes it may provide some quality fishing. This may not be neccessary now because Weyerhaeuser has shut down vehicle access to these lakes. So fishing pressure is probably way down.
Good discusion