Lunch Time -
Your philosophy of retaining whatever allowed by the managers has been the traditional attitude by many anglers and likely still represent the most common approach - nothing wrong with it.

Anuty -
Releasing of all unclipped fish is certainly the most consistent way to go if one wishes to limit impacts on wild stocks. However many folks seem to differiate between steelhead and the rest of our food and game fish.

Mike -
While I can understand your feelings on protecting all ESA listed fish however the practical impacts of such an approach is pretty harsh. If one wished to have no fishing impacts on any Washington ESA listed salmon we would need to consider closure of all marine water fisheries from SE Alaska south into Oregon. That would include bottom fish (halibut, long cod etc) as well as salmon and game fish. On the freshwater front all the Puget Sound and Columbia River rivers would have to be closed to all fishing (except possibly the months of January and February. Most feel that the minimal gains in reduced impacts on the listed stocks isn't worth the lost opportunities - especially when the major limiting factors are in the habitat arena.

Snit -
Wouldn't the fact that wild steelhead harvest fisheries limited to rivers with health stocks make steelhead management more robust (conservative) than those salmon stocks where the fishing is on mixed stocks?

Still waiting to hear from some of the folks that find it acceptable to keep wild salmon but whose input on the wild steelhead release issue was that the science didn't support the harvest of wild steelhead. Really curious as to what they may see as the differences between steelhead and salmon management.

Tight lines
S malma