Originally Posted By: jgreen
All i know is I can walk into cook creek or salmon river with my Quinault buddy any day of the week from late November to March and catch steelhead. Why? Because they absolutely stuff them with fish. Cook creek alone gets nearly 400,000 fish planted a year. Thats the answer, not protecting a couple of fish. Stock baby stock.


This.....

Before long someone will point out that the Skagit did plant 400+k and got didly back, however I do agree with plant more fish to get fish back. Idaho plants millions and gets tens of thousands back. If they only stocked 500k springer smolts, nobody would be fishing the Big C in spring. Since preserving native winter steelhead genetics is important, I don't know why all these puget sound rivers can't get alot more summer plants and then be selective on where to stock winters.

All boils down to budgets and management.....
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