Todd,

Yeah, it does seem like co-management has become less than co-equal. As for incidental mortality rate, the issue continues to be muddy. I find the lack of professional interest interesting, but my guess is that it's because CNR fishing is such a small niche market here on the coast where fishing still means killing fish. Fish management without killing fish must be a foreign Rocky Mountain concept still.

It can be fun to flog the fly v gear debate over beer, but it's generally unproductive. The thing about conventional gear fishing is that anglers wanting to be ten-percenters have increasingly gravitated to more efficient and effective methods of garnering hook-and-line angling success. And that becomes the crux of this issue, where, in order to have prospective fishing, angler efficiency has to be reduced. (Fly fishing at least has that going for it.) And fishing from boats has very significantly higher CPUE than fishing from foot, it's an obvious target. Using boats (motor or drift) for access only is probably higher than walk-in access, but I don't know that it would make the kind of difference necessary for PS steelheading.

Sg