Thanks, Skookum. That's certainly a lot of citations to support a hypothesis that there is a direct correlation between increasing hatchery plants and decreasing adult returns. While I'm convinced that hatchery introgression has a negative impact on wild steelhead, I'm not at all convinced that it's the major factor limiting steelhead returns, in Puget Sound or anywhere else.

If we truly want to see our children and granchildren fish for steelhead, we need to identify the major cause of their decline and address it to the greatest extent possible. It seems to me there's far too much we don't understand to make a decision as rash as eliminating hatchery plants from the Puget Sound region. That will result in full winter closures, and there are plenty of examples to show us that closed fisheries don't get reopened. There are also plenty of examples of how displacing anglers results in dangerous increases in pressure on other, neighboring regions that would also be closed to fishing were it not for their hatchery programs.

If you want us to fish in the future, I think it would be wise to support a more balanced approach; one that allows us to keep fishing, in some capacity, in the present.