Al this is a great photo. Do you have an idea of the date taken? When I see the cane creel and the old growth tree in it and the black and white photo maybe in the 1940's. The catch limits were much more liberal back then. Back when I first met my wife we would go to Montana to visit family and her Grandma loved Montana Creek Monster's. At that time the limit was
10 pounds of Brook trout.
Not a possession limit of numbers but by weight. Most of those fish may have made 7 inches.
I think she would have ate fish 6 days a week.
Even in Washington the catch limits growing up I remember when it was 16 or 18 trout a day per person. Families would go camping and they caught fish. I spoke with the region head Bio and he feels Brooke Trout are an invasive species in Washington and should perhaps be removed. But then that would also include the German Brown's
One of the latest crazes is Bass fishing. I fish a lake that with the slot limits I have watched folks filleting bass under 10 inches. I do think my wife could read her prayers thru them. But a decent sized bass has to be released. The fish in the lake have seen every spinner bait, soft plastic and hard bait known to man. This is a cold water lake where the bass grow slooowy and several years ago the WFDW in their infinite wisdom planted them and had a brain storm to make it a warm water species lake with a additional fee for the luxury of fishing the lake. Fortunately the plan feel through.
I think we all have seen some type of over harvest on the resources.
Here is what is planted on a weekly basis.
https://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/plants/weekly/
