it is true that over harvest is the problem and always has been the problem. I remember years ago I was at Bob's house and he told me about a book he either had or had read which was written by the UW fisheries department and published 2 years before the Bolt Decision in 1970. The book was a survey of the Quileute system and cited that it was the healthiest and most productive system in the state and even in 1970 less than 1% of the available spawning habitat was being utilized.

My dad knew a guy who died in his 90s in the early 1990's, he lived in Port Townsend and and actually died in a car wreck on his way home from fishing the west end. He started fishing the West End Rivers back in the early 1930's. He told my dad that you could stand in one hole all day, any day of the year it was not overloaded with spawning salmon and hook steelhead one after another.

Look at much of ALaska, huge runs of salmon and honestly very volatile river conditions, lots of silt and 4 months worth of available habitat to the fish VS 12 months down here yet empty rivers here compared to there.

I believe habitat and the pollution issue plays much less of a role than we are told. Salmon will spawn in a ditch alongside the road, I saw pinks and sockeye do it up in Alaska when I was a kid. If the fish are present they will find a way to complete their life cycle. If they are not present they can't reproduce. It's as simple as that....