Fisheries committee  I was thinking about a task force just within the province. That's what's missing. There's a lack of technical resources. Rob is pretty much at the bottom of the totem pole within that ministry. I don't think he supervises very many people, and I would hate to calculate how many levels of supervision there are above him.

Fisheries committee  Fish wheels are fine.

Fisheries committee  I have nothing against fish wheels, but pound traps have lower mortality attached to them.

Fisheries committee  It's a lot less than a gillnet, but it's—

Fisheries committee  The studies that have been done on pound nets—and there's an experimental pound net in the Columbia River in Washington state right now that has been operating for a number of years. The mortality was less than 5% in the experiments where they tagged the fish. They have the ability to absolutely not handle fish they don't want, because they can look down in the net and see what species they are.

Fisheries committee  I'm unaware of a single steelhead population that's ever been recovered through hatcheries. That was part of my job for 20 years before I retired. I was facilitating and assessing steelhead hatchery programs in the Lower Mainland. There were 17 different programs on different rivers, and not one was successful in improving the wild steelhead population.

Fisheries committee  I think it's a huge economic opportunity for Canada. We have an opportunity to catch more fish than we're currently catching. We have this rolling closure to protect steelhead, which does sort of a half-assed job because it's not long enough. The reason it's not long enough is that we don't want to let all these fish swim by without getting caught, but we really can have it both ways; we just have to change the way we fish.

Fisheries committee  I think there are conflicts both within the governments and between the governments. I see conflict within DFO between the science people and the management people. It's natural. It's in terms of priorities. Management's job is to provide openings and science's job is to protect fish.

Fisheries committee  No, not that I've seen. We're waiting for a hero but we haven't seen one.

Fisheries committee  Thank you. The crash of interior Fraser steelhead is one of the biggest fisheries stories of this century. Thompson River steelhead are or were among the largest, strongest, most iconic and most famous steelhead on the planet. Anglers came from around the world to try to catch one.