I thought I'd start a new thread rather than add on to the really long one below.

Salmo, as usual, thanks for your comments. I wish we could all take the time to become as educated in order to be more productive in conversation and argument about these highly emotionally charged topics (highly emotional for me, at least!). Skookum, I appreciate your comments as well. Welcome to the board!

Has anyone wondered if incidental mortality due to C&R is not the focus of the closure, but that an unaknowleged, but obvious, problem with C&Run, i.e., catch nate, run for the truck, is in the state's mind?

Those of us who fish the Stilly, Sauk, and Skagit spring runs have all seen it happen, and I shudder to think about how many fish are actually killed by those idiots during the C&R seasons.

If this were the case, I doubt that WDFW would want to come right out and say "we can't enforce a C&R season effectively, so we're not going to have one". If they did say this, then there would never be any occasion for such a season, regardless of the run forecasts.

I don't know if this is the situation or not, but I'd be curious to hear your opinions. Remember that just a few years ago Harriet Spanel and the Wildcat Native Steelhead Bonkers tried to get a similar law passed, one that would not allow C&R without effective enforcement. Of course, protecting fish was the last thing on their minds for even proposing that bill.

We all realized then that effective enforcement is all but impossible except at terminal fisheries like Blue Creek or Reiter Ponds, expecially with the cuts Enforcement has taken over the last decade.

Is it possible that by taking the stance that they are now that WDFW is actually protecting the possibility of having the C&R seasons reinstated at a later time by pointing to incidental mortality (a problem that will become less relevant as run size increases) rather than to lack of enforcement (a problem that will never become less relevant)?

On the other hand, I may have frozen a few too many brain cells fishing yesterday. Brrrr. I had ice on my guides from six in the morning until eleven, and then they started icing up again around 3:30. Didn't seem to bother the fish too much, though. Many chums now have sore lips, as well as a couple of silvers and a late native summer run. Two bummers of the day: Broke another rod, which is two in a month, and my hands were so cold in the morning that I couldn't figure out that the reason my scissors wouldn't cut through my skein of eggs was become my thumb was in the scissors, too. Ouch.

Later, all.

Fish on...

Todd.