As to the lotsa fish discussion, we used to walk 100% of the anadromous zones of the two watersheds we were studying weekly, September-June, doing spawner surveys. Even though we had traps on the streams and knew to the fish how many were up there, we walked to get spawn timing and distribution.

One November ('79, I believe), it got damn cold. Creek temps were below 32 degrees and flows dropped as water converted to ice and stopped flowing. Every week from late November to late January we counted 200 coho in a single pool under a large alder tree. If that was the only place we looked, "the creek was plugged with fish". When it finally thawed and flows bumped up, 200 coho came out from under the roots, went upstream, spawned and died. Point being that unless you look at the whole stream, unless you have previous year's data, what you have is bunch of fish in hole .

Not saying that WDFW has enough staff out there looking; in WB they have a lot of streams to look at on any one day. But they should have an Institutional Memory backed by data to at least suggest what was going on.