If a jack is just as viable a spawner as an adult, it makes no sense to allow a limit of up to 6. Assuming (there I go again) the wild:hatchery ratios are similar for jacks and adults, anecdotal evidence suggests that over 20 jacks might need to be caught to harvest a limit of 5 hatchery + 1 wild. With eggs being the preferred medium for fishing jacks, at least some of those released fish would be mortally wounded upon release. Lest we forget, a lot of adult, female Chinook get caught in that fishery.

Should we dial back the limit on jacks, to clear up the dangerous confusion their fishery causes in rulemaking, but also to assure better numbers of wild spawners reach the gravel? I get that you don't need as many males as females to have spawning success, but considering how many adult Chinook get hooked, landed, and (usually) released in the jack fishery, it seems like really bad policy to allow guys to keep eggs in water full of Chinook for the kind of time it would require to weed out 5, let alone 6, hatchery jacks.

But yeah, the regs were poorly written. I thought I had understood them completely. I had not.