C&R is not the problem. Nets are. When I actually worked traps and studied wild winter steelhead in western WA we had at least, I believe, 30% of the spawning done by March 15.

Wild winter steelhead, as was mentioned before, formerly had good returns in November, December, January. They had (and the current strong populations still do) have significant (>30%) repeat spawners, they used spawn at least from January to July. We will not recover them until we can get the stocks back in that direction. Those segments of the run were there so that the run could be successful. Without them, no success.

What we have going here is what is known as shifting baseline. The "old" guys, who fished in 30s, 40s, and 50s have a view of the when and how many significantly different from anglers whose memory may go back to the 80s or 90s.