They "let" us fish for them as a winter recreational opportunity targeting hatchery produced Chinook. Furthermore, remember the Puget Sound Salmon Stamp you had to buy? Those funds were used to rear Chinook for delayed release specifically to provide that winter blackmouth fishery (thanks to the late Senator Oke). The WDFW never did meet the production specified in the legislation (both in numbers and size) and tried to get rid of the program. Senator Oke opined that if they pushed for that he would ensure that the stamp and resulting money would go away. Ultimately the stamp went away tied to an increase in license fees and a system that sent a portion of license money to the hatchery program for each returned CRC which indicated that the individual had fished for salmon. WDFW has subsequently shifted its released to smaller fish arguing that they generate a higher contribution than those released at a larger size.

Given recent scientific study data a counter argument might well be that smaller fish at release manage to get out of the pinniped red zone and grow to adult size then return to be caught in the summer recreational fishery whereas the fish released at a larger size probably residualize at a higher rate but by doing so end up trying to survive in that pinniped red zone with a much lower survival rate.

So, the fact that these are hatchery fish means they were produced by the State for harvest so the issue of their being "juveniles" is irrelevant. Furthermore, emergent data reasonably leads one to conclude that disparities in prior contribution rates (by release size) can be directly attributed to increasing populations of harbor seals and their predation on smolt and resident blackmouth. One might argue that reduction of the legal minimize size of winter blackmouth would allow a better opportunity for recreational anglers to harvest a blackmouth before it becomes seal food.