Thanks for posting that link Chief! What a great article. I have been reading articles and papers by Dick Beamish for close to 20 years and have great respect for his work. Among other virtues his work has such a refreshing intellectual honesty.

Near as I can find, active steelhead hatchery production is now down to 6 facilities with 5 operating in the Fraser Valley and the majority of it coming from federal facilities. Hatchery marked steelhead from facilities that have closed may still have been be returning in 21/22 but will be very rare by now.

Thought I'd mention that the actual data reported by anglers is reduced by some factor (about a third if I recall correctly) to account for "over reporting". Supposedly it is a standard practice throughout North America

Heading out on Saturday for a day trip near merrit. Any lake suggestions? Wanting to try a new lake
(not Marquart, Harmon, Paska or Lac le juene). Fly or gear available, looking for action (aren't we all  ) but prefer 16+ inch fish. Any suggestions? 2WD only. Feel free to message me privately if you want. Thanks

I'd give Lundbom a shot .

Sorry for the loss of your friend and colleague, Dave

I’d be curious to overlay the Province’s steelhead stocking numbers against a couple of those columns,   particularly “Steelhead Kept”

Check out www.islandfishermanmagazine.com article Re-Think What We Know about Salmon published April 15 2024 which also has a reference to steelhead

Sorry for your loss.

Except for the fact that 99% of those changes were done long before the time period in the study you provided. If we check our regulations from the last 12 years, we will find that basically nothing has been changed from 2012-2024.
So basically, we have the same regulations, with a sharp drop in angler effort and fish landed.....and still....the returns continue to diminish....

I didn't provide a study. I made this clear and made the exact point you made in your last sentence in my previous post.

In some cases (not necessarily steelhead), reducing drastically reducing bag limits, adopting catch and release regulations  and banning angling methods that cause high release mortality can dramatically increase abundance and angling success. All that's been done with steelhead in BC.

Except for the fact that 99% of those changes were done long before the time period in the study you provided. If we check our regulations from the last 12 years, we will find that basically nothing has been changed from 2012-2024.
So basically, we have the same regulations, with a sharp drop in angler effort and fish landed.....and still....the returns continue to diminish....

I made no inference one way or the other. However to prove anything, a hypothesis has to be tested. The questionnaire data is not such a test. It just shows while angling effort declines as angling success does some anglers do continue to fish and even catch fish. Creel surveys have found just that in the past. In some cases (not necessarily steelhead), reducing drastically reducing bag limits, adopting catch and release regulations  and banning angling methods that cause high release mortality can dramatically increase abundance and angling success. All that's been done with steelhead in BC.

So in 10 years:
The angler effort (or pressure) has dropped by half.
The amount of Steelhead landed to shore or net has dropped from 104k to less than 16k per year.

And yet....Steelhead runs in general continue to decline.

I'm shocked that Ralphy boy would actually post proof of what we already knew....and that is that Steelhead fishermen (the Sporties) are not the reason that the numbers keep dropping.