Spike, in my mind two percent for both is an "acceptable" number. But, I'm not convince you're making a valid comparison with these two (statistical?) figures. Two-percent of the entire wild salmonid population for a watershed, Washington State, or even the Pacific Northwest, is hardly comparable, numbers-wise, to the two-percent of fish that die as a result of being C&R'd in their respective areas.

From one perpective, using your numbers, in order to make the number of natives caught-and-harvested equal to the number killed through C&R mortality, the C&R group MUST HOOK AND LAND THE ENTIRE RUN!!!

Do the math. Assuming a run of 1000 native salmon and steelhead return to the Zipperlip, the meathunters will take their 20 fish (2%). But, the C&R guys must catch ALL 1000 fish, the entire run of returning adults, in order to kill their 20 (2%) through C&R mortality.

Silly? Yes. I failed to mention that the number of anglers that practice C&R pale in comparison to the meathunters, making our two-percent impact a very small number of the "population." Just another example of how Spike skewed the numbers and I reskewed them back.