What made sport fishing for a salmon less fun? To resolve fish declines and salvage salmon and steelhead, the reaction was to take away from anglers. A long list of meaningless rules evolved for anglers, all during indiscriminate overharvests with river nets and native fish extinctions. These were pathetic sacrifices placed on anglers so complicated that they were absolutely worthless and are still there.
Much of the West Coast adult salmon are harvested by Canada and Alaska before us. They are being trimmed too far to sustain in natural habitat here. The salmon declines show how extremist people have gone too far. They are turning rivers into wasted water sanctuaries, then dictating that there is no sport fishing or hatchery releases. Hatchery fish successfully created by fishery science now are claimed gene polluters and unwanted but cannot be eliminated.
Read about the Great Lakes salmon fishing and how it started. Look up the Nez Perce tribe hatchery successes and how they were accomplished. Do a search for Elwa River recovery tactics that our state should copy but doesn’t. Do a search on the wild fish failures on the Wind and Kalama rivers started years ago.
A questionable fish is being sensationalized. How can this not-so-pure, unpredictable fish ever be or stay wild?
