Last year I had the privelege of hiking from the trailhead on the you know where all the way through to the South Shore Road...Incredible country and one of the jewel streams in the state...I wish I'd been around during primetime, but that seems to be a common theme for me...

My home river is the on the OP and I have to say that it is relatively healthy in comparison to the rest of the rivers in Western washington. My sole worry is the netting that takes place...I know this is not the most PC viewpoint but, I wish there was such a thing as "net and release". I am definitely in favor of tribal harvest, I just wish there was a way for them to target non-native fish. Will they pull their nets if the sporties go C & R?

My local river needs the dikes removed at its lower end. That's the #1 problem. The naturally-spawning runs that spawn in the lower river are threatened.

Every time there is some sort of flood, instead of the river flooding into the surrounding land and slowing down, it's kept within the dikes and the river becomes a raging flume. This past winter, it flooded a three big times, once was a record-breaker, and the lower river looks completely different now. The places where fish spawned this past summer are now either 10ft under rocks and gravel, or the river has moved 300ft to the east, leaving all the eggs high & dry. It's really sad.

I can't see how there will be any stocks recovery until this lower river dike problem is fixed.

-N.

If the hatchery is to remain on the Skykomish ,I would like to see the smolts being deposited along several places from the lower Sky to the hatchery at Reiter and even above along the N.Fork. In my experience of fishing that river, it seems most of the fish jet to Reiter.

I would also like to see more fisherman carrying a garbage bag with them and retrieving instead of depositing trash on the river bank. I live on the river and I am constantly picking up fishing refuse in front of my place.

I would also like to see barbless hook requirement and a 1 fish daily limit.

The Sky is my home river.Some changes I think would help.
1.Relase the smolts thru out the system.
2.Start a brood stock program (like on the Vedder)
3.Provide more public fishing areas
4.Restore King fishery to 1980 levals
5.(Dont flame me) close the river to sleds some where around Startup

I fish the Sky also. I think that they do release fish through out the system. I caught a Steelhead out of the West Fork of the Foss River in July on a fly it was a 21" male. I kept it as my Granddaughter said that when you go fishing you never bring any home. I did this one time just to show her that I did catch them. That's quite a ways from the hatchery. Jim S.