Good questions, ronnie. My guess is that you just don't want to get checked anywhere below Monte or returning to the Monte ramp from downstream with 2 dead fish.

Silly rule, in my opinion (many will simply choose to focus their effort upstream of Monte to take advantage of the limits they probably won't catch anyway), but as I understand it, this year's rules are mostly an attempt to keep as much water open as long as possible, which I think is the right idea. I catch one keeper a lot more often than I catch a limit of 2 or more, so I'm good with lowering bag limits to justify longer seasons (even if I question the effectiveness of so doing). The hell of it is that the season still ended up shorter than normal....