I love all these armchair scientists...on both sides here.
What's poisonous to one species may not be toxic to another...who knows if the cures and borax are toxic. As well, most plastics etc are resistant to acid so who knows if indeed a roe bag can be digested...if not, can it be passed...if not passed is it harmful? Who knows....all I can tell you is that I haven't encountered any dead steelhead washed up on the river (after 15+ years of steelheading).
With so many unanswered questions, I think it is dangerous to propose fixes that may actually offer no benefit to the fish!?! After all, if they banned roe bags, then whats next, roe, pink worms, lead weights, etc, etc, etc.
The first part of this qoute is interesting because I am now wondering that if you guys are saying borax may be harmful to some species but maybe not Steelhead, then what about the WD40 that some guys use on their ghost shrimp, roe bags, etc.... WD40 is harmful to us but is it harmful to fish
.... there could be a lot of things that are but we seem to be more interested in catching fish rather than protecting them.
Cheers,
Dan
Secondly last year was my first year fishing for Steelies ever and I found about a 14 pound wild Steelhead dead, washed up on the river bank about 2 feet from the edge after the river had risen then receded when we had that blow out last year..... Maybe it just got stuck
Who knows but I sure wasnt gonna be caught cutting open the stomach of a wild Steelhead in my first year