Chasin' Baitman -

I agree that salmon anglers encounter relatively few rockfish but keep in mind there are whole lot of folks that fish Puget Sound for salmon.

In WDFW's "The Biology and Assessment of Rockfish In Puget Sound", 2009

available at -

http://wdfw.wa.gov/publications/00926/wdfw00926.pdf

I found in table 5.5 that in 2007 that 7,423 rockfish were encounter by anglers targeting salmon. That seems like a lot until consider that there were nearly 211,000 salmon angler trips that year on Puget Sound. Or to put it another way those salmon anglers would be expected to catch an incidental rockfish once in every 28 trips. That does not seem to far out of line to me.

As other has said this is a huge issue that requires close attention and in an ideal world would require contributions from more than just the fishers to address factors limiting PS rockfish.

Curt