For those who think that the sport fishery can't exert a lot of pressure, back in the day the PS blackmouth fishery took essentially all of the non-Indian share. Actually, with the exception of the Bellingham Bay Chinook net fishery the sporties, with some help from the WA trollers, took the NI share.

It should also be remembered that Chinook were accounted for as "adult equivalents". This means that an adult in the bay pr river conted as 1 fish. A barely legal blackmouth counted as (say) half a fish because the natural mortality gave it only a 50% chance of becoming an adult.

So, not only did the sporties take 50% of the accounted fish they took a whole lot more than that in actual fish.

In the interest of fairness i should point out that WDG used to have a spring trout fishery that they knew took steelhead smolts but allowed it because it gave opportunity to those who preferred to catch trout in the spring on light gear rather than steelhead in the winter on heavier gear.