I completely disagree! Yes it’s a blood sport and one out of a hundred may die after being released but not having “nate purists” on the river is the absolute worst thing for native steelhead for many reasons. First off many if not most rivers, once closed for the season, experience brutal poaching efforts and since they are closed there is very little enforcement. Also having us “nate purists” on the river, despite a small mortality rate, is the very best thing for the future of native steelhead. Without us on the river fighting for their future there is no future. Close a river, or all rivers in the spring, and you’ll see these fish attacked from every direction from habitat distruction like logging and mining to housing developments and water use rights and yes netting and etc. etc. etc………. We are the only user group fighting for their future, the future of our State fish, PERIOD!!!! Take us off the river and you’ve thrown in the flag of defeat! Sure we may continue the fight for some time but without a younger generation (think OPfisher, Tbird, Mreyns etc…) to keep up the fight we are done! We simply cannot be the last generation to fight for these fish!!!!!!! If we are not on the river then that is exactly what we will be the last generation!

I like the Ira Spring analogy. Ira’s the guy who wrote the 100 hikes series about Washington’s backcountry trails. At the time, some 50 years ago, the few hikers in the state where pissed that he was writing about all the hikes to their “special” places. Their argument was that the wilderness areas couldn’t take the pounding of the masses. And that is a valid point but DOES NOT offset the fact that there are now millions of hikers who thru their letters and hard work have created hundreds of thousands of new trails and wilderness protection for millions of NEW acres of state wildlands!

In my mind we give up fishing for these amazing fish then we’ve lost the fight!

And if we’re not on the river who’s going to educate this guy, “Damn nice fish dude but that really sucks you bonked him and your going to rightfully get skewered on the bulliten boards!”