2buck, if that were the case, no more "wild" steelhead in the snake, then by that same reasoning there are no "wild" steelhead in washington at all. Hatchery fish can stray from one river to another, and hatcheries have existed for nearly 100 years now. Try and convince all the scientists and the other fishermen on this board that there is no such thing as a wild steelhead and I think your'e in for an argument that you will not win. It sure would make managing the fisheries much easier though. But that's the problem, this is a very complicated problem that will not be solved by simlply pumping out more fish from the hatcheries. In fact the hatcheries in Idaho pour a bunch of fish into the rivers each year with fewer and fewer returns. So if you can force yourself to believe that true wild fish still exist go back and read Salmo Gs' post As he really did a nice job and put some time into it, Thanks Salmo G.

Oh, yeah for those of you who think the Rhonde is doing so great I ask you one question, What happened to the coho and sockeye runs that used to be there? Does anybody have any info on when those runs disappeared? It would be nice to know how these runs demise correlates to the construction of the dams, if at all.

thanks,
Duke