Lifter99 are you accepting it now because Salmo said it? If I were you, i would too. He knows his stuff.
Stonefish posted the numbers. Did you look at them? I reviewed them again and have looked at them many times. What do you see from 1990 to 2004 on the Nisqually. Or what do you see on the Cedar river? How about all of the other creeks on the list that have not been fished? You see a decrease in wild fish numbers on every stream, even for the smaller watersheds outside of the puget sound. So my point is that if you like fishing and harvesting then you need to support hatchery steelhead and salmon. In my opinion, you are a hypocrite if you are for preserving wild steelhead and yet at the same time you are advocating for catch and release seasons on rivers like the Skagit. You are only advocating for what suits you the best and you think that that should apply to everyone else. If you truly care about wild steelhead then don't fish on them and don't support a CnR season on wild steelhead on the Skagit. So have you done your research? If so then please explain yourself again in light of the numbers presented.
Those who are against hatcheries have drunk the kool-aid that the government has given you to think that the mixing of the wild and hatchery fish is what is causing the decline in wild fish populations. The department gave you this based on a poorly done outdated study from Oregon that does not apply. The result is that they have to produce less fish which costs them less money. It is a win win for the government to spend less on hatchery fish and it is also a win for farm raised fish. If the department is producing/raising less fish then there needs to be less employees working for the department. Interestingly though, there has not been a decrease in employees for WDFW but rather an increase at the cost of our hatchery fish.