Holy F!

News flash: fishing is not good for fish. Ask any fish that has been caught. What might be less obvious is that "not fishing" won't necessarily provide the benefit of all fish populations surviving particularly well either. An alternative to Kurt and WFC's blanket approach would be to make situation specific regulatory decisions about fishing based on the most probable outcome that fishing, or not fishing, would cause.

A for instance, if fishing were always closed when water temp is greater than 65* F, then there would never in any summer be any fishing allowed in the lower Deschutes River, OR until some time in September. Locally the Stilly would be closed every summer. We could do a look-up and probably discover that a great many west coast rivers would be closed every summer because 65* F isn't that uncommon.

I totally agree with the concept of closing fishing by regulation when conditions make fishing unacceptably harmful to fish. But that isn't always 65* F. Everywhere. All the time. If the WFC wants to conserve all the fish all the time, then closing all fishing everywhere all the time would be one good way to get there. But we ought to keep both eyes open and understand whether the effects of our actions are the results we actually want.

Sg