Todd,

Your post captures several of the salient reasons why the potential effects of hatchery steelhead have been reduced even more than they were before. The early timed wild winter runs were significant in number, but they still were the smaller fraction of the population. And those early fish were divided between the early timed spawners and the normal (late) timed spawners.

It's my estimation that in most PS basins, and especially the Skagit, that the early timed spawners were still the smaller fraction. I base that on the headwater elevation of the various tributaries, including the lowermost tributaries in the basin. Elevation influences water temperature, which influences spawn timing. Even the lowest Skagit tributaries head in places like Cultis Mountain, which is over 3,000', and that's typical of the "foothills" in the Skagit basin.

I mention this because I don't think the early timed wild fish were reduced in abundance through introgression or displacement as much as by the more obvious mixed stock harvest. It's also consistent with my old fish data, where harvest really ramped up in the 1960s in response to hatchery development at Barnaby Slough and improved road and boat access and increased leisure time (OK, and spinning reels). By the time the Boldt Decision rolled around, early timed wild fish were already an exception, rather than the rule.

Recovering early timed wild fish would be possible only with selective harvest, and that, we know, is likely to be a problem because of tribal insistence on gillnetting. I should also mention that another constraint on recovering early timed steelhead is habitat. The lowland tributaries that once hosted them are among the most trashed and will remain so for logical development-related reasons. They could still produce some steelhead because they are producing significant numbers of coho and cutthroat.

Sg