Gotta understand that dead fish don't spawn and it really doesn't matter how they die. Dead is dead. You can argue the accuracy of reporting but that sword has two very sharp edges. The number of dead fish is controlled by the management objectives. Quite possibly OR believes that more fish should spawn than WA does.

When I started out, the steelhead minimum escapement goal, as stated to me by the head of the fish program in WDG, was a pair of fish per mile of creek. That means, like for S Prairie Creek, we need about 30 steelhead to adequately seed it. While that may have changed, most managers still hold to a concept that anything above MSY (which is fairly low versus the run size or habitat capacity) is not only wasted but leads to catastrophe by excess escapement.