Buddy, picture this scenario: it's mid-November, the peninsula's rivers are low and clear, and the fall kings are just stacked in the deeper holes. Set gillnets are relatively ineffective because of the lack of upriver movement. Also, sweeping the holes would be hard on the gear and laborious. Under these conditions half a dozen bottles of Clorox, at $0.79 per bottle, would be cheap and deadly effective for harvesting these kings. Or how about bleaching a smaller tributary river that hosts a hatchery, like the Wallace or Soos Creek perhaps? Those big kings are already competing for oxygen under those low summer flows. This time it'll take less than six, maybe just three bottles of bleach.

Whew, writing this stuff left a nasty taste in my mouth. Yet, the way I see it is that many steelheaders and salmon fishers have become both stewards and "watchdogs" over our natural resources. By explaining what bleaching is to anglers that were previously ignorant, Bruce and I have capacitated fellow anglers to be able to recognized this illegal activity in the future. The truth of the matter is that bleaching does occur in Washington State's rivers and streams. Thus, writing off bleaching as an "absurdity" is absurd.

"Knowledge is king." - Kool Moe Dee