Tying a few posts together in this thread for discussion.

If a high percentage of out migration loss is proven historically or not,-- it is happening. This would prove mother nature is right in historically trying to flood the rivers with fish to spawn. In the infinite wisdom of man, MSY/MSH and carrying capacity does the polar opposite. Instead of flooding the spawning grounds with fish these manmade devices flooded the bottom of boats with fish.

MSY contributed to declines and is known today as voodoo science and IMO the jury is still out on carrying capacity since we can see how carrying capacity has been manipulated by non tribal and now tribal trying to get more fish in their boats instead of the spawning grounds. Escapement (over a different number per river is considered waste) could very well be the mechanism that needs to be looked at and improved dramatically for more redds leading to more smolts to compensate the out migration loss. (would you want 20% of 100,000 or a million There is a big difference between 20,000 and 200,000 just using for example only.)

So many rivers with low escapement contributes to depensation and supplementation in this Hamma Hamma study shows an increase of 10x more redds which could help even though we need the capability to be able to flood the rivers with fish again. It looks like we are at a point if great numbers of escapement (waste) aren’t allowed back to spawn then this is just could be a exercise in futility.

It was also brought up that the correlation between certain species depend on each other, so all species of fish should be considered to flood the rivers again.

Good luck changing current policy since the powers to be believe that mother nature is just plain wrong, which under current conditions should be under scrutiny. With every fish earmarked for harvest over escapement goals, even if these extra HC steelhead occur they are already going to tribal C&S according to PS HC harvest plans.