CFM,

There are two biological aspects to not harvesting wild steelhead. The first is to help re-build dpressed runs, and the second is to protect those that are in better shape from joining the long, long list of depressed runs.

Will WSR bring back depressed fish runs? Not by itself...and I don't think anyone would claim that it will. Making claims that supporters of WSR think that it will is not logical, it's flat out wrong. Most, but not all, of the rivers that have depressed runs of steelhead already have not allowed wild steelhead harvest for a while.

Harvest is just one of the many detrimental impacts on wild steelhead, and all the other impacts need to be addressed, too, and to claim that WSR advocates don't know or don't support that are not logical, either, just wrong.

Harvest is a component of the impacts, though, and pointing at tribal fishing, dams and water quality issues, other habitat issues, and hatchery issues as the "real" problem leaves the harvest issue out. Most folks who will argue that sport harvest is not an issue will immediately turn around and point at tribal harvest. Harvest is harvest, and it's hypocritical to point at one aspect of harvest and not at the other.

In depressed runs every fish, every skein of eggs, and every sac of sperm, is important, more important to the fish than to someone's desire to eat the fish and make bait out of the eggs.

Now that this component of harvest is out of the way, all the rest can be focused on better.

What about harvest over "healthy" runs, like those on the OP? Wild steelhead release is a management tool that should be used to keep healthy rivers healthy.

That being said, what is a "healthy" river? Every, and I mean every, stream on the OP is in a state of population decline except for one.
They are in the same position that all the rest of the streams in western Washington were twenty years ago..."healthy" enough to sustain harvest. Habitat and dams are not much of an issue on those rivers...logging has mainly been curtailed, so forest conditions are on the mend, and there are no dams on those west slope streams. Massive hatchery plants of non-indigenous stocks still takes place, and that, of course, does have a detrimental effect.

Those streams have not had the Puget Sound/Georgia Straits issue of PDO.

What is driving the overall decline of those populations (except for one)? It's harvest.

As those streams' populations continue to decline, so does the genetic material available to the populations, reducing the overall fitness of the population, causing further declines. Just because they are making escapement, most of the time, does not make them healthy...and their continuing decline bears that out. Each individual fish is important to help fight that off, and again each fish is more important to the fish run than it is to eat or make bait out of.

What about the one, single, stream that is above escapement and is actually increasing? We're talking about the Quillayute.

The Quillayute takes massive sport and tribal harvest, and keeps on getting bigger. That's awesome, and I wish that all the rest of our streams were doing it, too. However, it's not all roses there, either. Certain components of the run are getting hammered, specifically the early portion, and the genetic material available is decreasing.

Because that stream has not suffered the decline, or outright collapse, that the rest have is no reason to keep doing things the same way there that we did everywhere else, where they did decline or collapse.

The same folks that advocated this action are not just focusing on this to save wild steelhead. I personally, along with several others on this board, have been down in Olympia a few times testifying about the Columbia River fiasco that the tangle net fishery is. Grandpa has been working on that, too.

Jacob, where were you? Plunker?

I've also been down to testify about setting instream flow standards to make sure that enough clean, clear, cold water remains in our streams to support fish runs.

Where were any of you for those hearings?

How many of you are making your opinions known about the project to fix both of the land slides on the North and South Forks of the Stillaguamish River?

How many of you sent letters or testified about making the lowlands surrounding the North Fork of the Skykomish protected land under the "Wild SKy Initiative"? This would protect miles of spawning grounds for countless runs of anadromous fish.

Sitting on the sidelines and b!tching just doesn't get it done...

Where's the illogical passion in the above statements? You'll find plenty of passion, I'll gladly admit...

Lastly, at every hearing I've ever been to on this issue, and every letter I've ever seen about it, and every Commissioner or WDFW staffer I've ever heard talk about it, has ever had word one from the power companies about this issue at all. Ever.

CFM, you have great passion, and I wish that everyone else would have 1/10 of the passion and ethic you do to work for what you believe in. However, the world of steelhead is a lot bigger than the Cowlitz River. Tacoma Power does not give a rat's a$$ about what happens anywhere except on the rivers they dam. There also is no wild fish harvest on any streams that have dams. It doesn't make even a blip on their radar screens.

Will tribal harvest and habitat issues have to be addressed? Of course. Just like it doesn't make sense to have lots of fish with no habitat, it doesn't make sense to have lots of habitat with no fish.

If more sportsmen would put their efforts together it would be a lot easier. It's a lot easier, I guess, to go fishing, both on the river and here on the internet, than to take a short ride over to Olympia and become part of the solution.

The fight is far from over, but sportsmen in the fight for wild steelhead have thrown down the gauntlet...

Fish on...

Todd.