Elijah, Sure I am going to support what Salmo said. He is a retired fisheries bio. His thoughts and the numbers from Stonebreath are basically the same ones numbers I saw. There was a short c/r fishery on the Skagit for steelhead in 2018 with another planned for 2019 I buy my license(s) every year so I do support hatchery production. I harvest hatchery fish. I support c/r fishing (with selective gear rules) when the numbers of wild steelhead support it. That is not being a hypocrite. I think most would agree that we will never be able to harvest wild steelhead again in Washington. I think that is wonderful.
Raising hatchery fish is so much more expensive now. Just operation of the hatcheries (feed,power,etc.) costs more You are going to get less fish for the money now. "Less bang for the buck" so to speak. Gov. Inslee has proposed more money for hatchery production in his proposal to save the SRKW.