Honestly, I thought there was already a barbless rule in place on those tribs. I guess my personal choice to always fish barbless somehow planted fake rules in my head. Either that, or the rules I saw and heard about only applied to salmon, which is probably the case.
When I tie, the first step (assuming I'm not tying on barbless hooks) is to pinch down the barb in the vise jaws. This ensures that I can't get over-excited when I start my fishing day and start fishing a fly with a barbed hook. When I buy trout flies (I hate tying anything under a size 12 or so, so I buy a lot of the small stuff AT MY LOCAL FLY SHOP), I sometimes forget to pinch barbs in my rush to start fishing. I usually realize my mistake before it's too late, but I've overhandled and likely killed more trout than I like to think while trying to remove a small, barbed hook from a delicate spot. Those tiny hooks with barbs are especially grabby and tough to back out in my experience.
But enough about me (not sure why I thought the bought fly tangent was necessary). On to the matter at hand: barbless rules extending up the Columbia tribs. As I said, I try to always fish barbless, so this change would be no skin off my back. HOWEVER, the Cowlitz, in particular, is one place where I think barbs should not be illegal. Nearly all the fish in that river are hatchery-reared, which means the vast majority are intended to be harvested. Wild encounters are nearly non-existent on the Cowlitz, so I see no real reason why folks shouldn't be allowed to use barbs. Besides, while barbless hooks are definitely easier to remove from smaller fish, the difference is not as clear with salmon and steelhead. The larger hooks, combined with the weight of bigger fish, seem to create holes that a barb can be backed out of fairly easily. I'm not sure whether that's good or bad, but anyway....
Folks who like to use barbs when legal have a legitimate claim in that barbs lose fewer fish. Especially when it's a kid catching his first ever steelhead, it can be a real shame to lose one to a barbless hook. Of course, the more fish we fight on barbless hooks, the better we get at using rod position, line stripping, and other methods to keep the line tight and prevent most such losses.
I can go either way with this rule, but I would like some explanation of how wild fish, the WDFW, or anyone else really has anything to gain from adding this restriction, especially on the Cowlitz.