What exactly is the WSC (and others) justification for the blanket approach to fisheries managment that is WSR?

Is blanket regulation a trend we should encourage sport fisheries managment? I think not.

Do the ends really justify the means? Should we do whatever it takes to protect wild steelhead (except ban C&R!), even if it means unnecessary loss of future fishing opportunity, or even if it messes up regulation of other fisheries.

I think in the long term, blanket approaches will result in great loss of opportunity. I'm not defending the outgoing 5 wild steelhead a year regulation, I think a more conservation minded approach would be good. However, if the fish can't take some level of harvest hooking mortality impacts aren't acceptable either. A dead fish is dead whether bonked or played to death.

Clearly there are fisheries where one part of the state has healthy populations of a given species, while the same species is threatened in other parts of the state. Does this mean we should quit fishing for a fish even in a healthy population, if that fish is threatened in some other part of the state?
I certainly don't think so.

But the logic of mandatory WSR seems to set a precendent for these types of rigid managment schemes.