Spawnout

I assume that only this first section of your post was meant to address my comments?

I am fully aware of how scales can be analyzed to establish "certain biological information"! My point in my earlier post was relating to "how and where" steelhead may be harvested once they have left our rivers. It has always been my understanding that was the entire purpose for our game managers to use the CWT's!

It simply shows where a fish (salmon) comes from and what stock it is, time, etc. about the fish. I guess other information may also be in the CWT, but this was my main purpose for addressing why we were not using CWT's on steelhead.

I have never seen any such data on wild steelhead. If it's out there, it's being kept pretty close to someone's belt! Why else do you think that our fish managers know so little about what happens to these fish once they hit the seas? As far as I know, no ones know for sure were they really go to, or if they may be targeted during there cycle at sea. They knew they were getting hit buy foreign drift nets at one point, but that's all I ever heard. I know for a fact, that lots of fish have been, and still are being caught in the huge commercial harvest of other fish, but once they are drug up onto the decks (almost always dead), they are immediately thrown back into the sea because they are not allowed to keep them!

None of those fish are ever kept by these ships to see where they (the fish) had came from, so no data is ever kept, taken or recorded! They know if they were to keep the fish, the data would show that they were the ones who were "intercepting", and that would mean the end to their fishery!

So I guess I would have to respectfully disagree with you about the gathering of data not being a problem.

Cowlitzfisherman