Jeff - there is nothing 'special' regarding the regs at Fish.

Most folks are just not reading the fine print when it comes to bait fishing.

Trout master is right, when fishing with bait in WA lakes, you must consider all caught fish part of your daily limit. If any of those fish are hooked badly, they must be kept (this goes for bait, flies, lures, etc).

If you like to C\R, that is great. Sometimes what I do is start out with no bait. If the fishing is good, I don't use it, and C\R all I want (keeping badly hooked ones). If fishing slows down, I may stick on some bait, and fish until I've caught my limit (whether I kept them or not).

If a game warden watches a person (or if that person is reported to the warden) catch 5 fish while using bait, and that person keeps fishing (even if they switch to lures\flies), then they are can be busted.

This is very hard to enforce, but it is designed to slightly improve the quality of our put and take lakes. To many folks throw the little ones back - regarless of how badly hooked, just so they can fill their stringer with only the big guys (this is called grading).