Salmo g.

There is more to the story of the economic returns of various species smolt returns. While it is obvious that the more fish the better the real measure of economic returns in recreational fisheries is the number of man-days supported by the production releases.

Let's face it steelhead fisheries are less than sane and are willing to spend a surprising amount of time and effort to capture their quarry. Many steelhead fishers will continue to fish at catch rates at which many coho fishers would quit. As a result even at some pretty low return rates the release of steelhead smolts has a positive cost:benefit ration. With steelhead the non-treaty share goes to the recreational fishers while with coho that non-treaty share is split between commercial and recreational fishers. Final if one is interested in river fisheries steelhead generally support a higher exploitation rates than coho. It is not uncommon for in-river recreational steelhead fisheries to be able to harvest over 50% of the available fish (typically that rate can be over 70%) while that in-river harvest rate of the available coho is typically less than 10%. All of which is along way of saying there may be more to the decision of whether to raise steelhead than just the cost/low return rates.

BTW -
It is looking probable that the SAR for wild coho this year on north Puget Sound may have been at or below that 1% range.

Curt