Hey, I hope I don't sound like some kind of shill for the WDFW on the other thread. I disagree with a lot of their past policies, and question the methodology that led to the closures this spring. I guess I'm just trying to focus on the positive (if their is one) and figure out how to keep our fragile fisheries available to us. In my talks with Curt Kraemer on the subjects you mentioned, he feels that the incidental mortality is somewhere between 5 and 7%, not counting what he calls "over the bank mortality" which is almost (given the level of enforcement) impossible to determine. I'm not sure what the impact of this is in determining the closure, but since they think we're going to have a severely depressed run, they feel any mortality is dangerous. On another subject, there is a strong feeling among many biologist and oceanographers that this year's returning class of 2-salt fish will be the first to have lived their entire ocean life under excellent conditions, and we are seeing reflections of this in the robust returns of other 2-salt fish, such as coho and summer steelhead in 2000 (which the WDFW grossly underestimated). I suggested to the powers that be this morning that they use this winter's returns of 2-salt hatchery fish as an indicator for reopening the spring C & R fishery. As in, if we get unexpectedly high returns, the 2-salt fish may more than make up for a lower than average 3-salt and repeat spawning fish population. The response was that they have found no correlation between any other species, or for that matter, hatchery winter runs and wild fish of the same year class, and are unwilling to bet on improved ocean conditions. I had to at least try. Other than that, there's no way to make an in-run assessment the way they did with the emergency coho opener, so we will be stuck with their decision, even if we have a stellar run, as predicted by some at the UW. What to do now? I have no idea. Golf, anyone.