Have we tried to put more fish on the grounds that "won't take them"? In the 80s we probably doubled chum escapements above "MSY". Damn, the production increased. In the 90s and 00s we took pinks to probably 50x MSY. Same thing happened. Admittedly, then runs have since declined but decadal shifts in ocean production have been known to drive overall numbers.

Pinks and chums spawn in the same places as Chinook. The pinks spawn at the same time. They have a similar freshwater experiance in that they are short-term rearing fish. Why, other than the fact that Chinook are so damn popular in marine mixed stock fisheries, are they so different in freshwater?

When WDF first set Chinook escapement goals for Puget Sound they explicitly said that the goals were nowhere near utilizing the available habitat.

We know that mass spawning actually cleans the gravel and removes the fine sediments that are currently entrained in the gravel and significantly reduce egg-fry survival. What is the plan for cleaning the gravel if we are not going to use spawners? Also, and getting back to the problems with MSY, mass spawning has been shown to produce fewer fry per female (competition, superimposition, actual digging up of eggs) but sends more total fry to the estuary. And economist wants more fry per female, and ecologist wants more fry.