This will be a short post as it should speak for itself. After a week in California I was lucky enough to return to the cyber world and find this:

You can now (since Feb. 16 and through Apr. 30) catch and keep a wild steelhead on one of eight rivers on the Olympic Peninsula. The Bogachiel, Calawah, Clearwater, Dickey, Hoh, Quillayute, Quinault and Sol Duc rivers are the only rivers in Washington where wild steelhead may be retained. See rules on page 27 of fishing regs pamphlet available at http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/regulations/

After all the f–king work that has gone into various aspects of wild steelhead protection not only on the Olympic Peninsula but elsewhere in this state, just when we feel as though the tide might have just come to a slack and begin to turn, WDFW goes and makes one of the dumbest decisions I have EVER seen in my life. Jesus Christ, even Californian’s get it more than we do, I think I want to move back to Oregon, done calling myself a Washingtonian, at least in the fishing world, it is embarrassing.

I don’t care what kind of gear you throw at steelhead or how you do it but to make every effort to kill off these fish in the name of “listening to our constituents” is a crock. Listen to the larger constituent base, the rest of the business owners in Washington who will feel the impact of a state with no wild steelhead and therefore zero tourism dollars coming here in an effort to catch one. I honestly didn’t think this was rocket science but apparently it is.