It's hard to get a solid number since IPHC manages halibut take based on pounds landed (easy to monitor for the commercial fleets who have to go to a fish buyer with scales to weigh the catch). The sport fleet catch is calculated based on creel checks and formula to estimate the harvest numbers and then converted to pounds landed based on creel check measurements of fish against the IPHC weight/length charts that give an estimated total harvest by pounds. The different areas of WA waters can have different average weights.

If you use a 20 lb average, 277,100 lbs of halibut would make 13,855 fish available for harvest. With an annual limit of four fish and a field possession limit of one fish per day and two in possession it is possible that with the new base FCEY for the next four years, we hope to be able to make an argument for a season structure of some sort rather than the specified days to fish. The halibut CRC card that will be issued starting this year for saltwater and combination license holders who want to fish for halibut should give us some better numbers to work with.

The most recent CRC data I was able to get was for 2016. 43,827 halibut CRCs were returned. 42,972 CRCs (98%) showed 0 halibut. 498 showed 1 halibut (1.1%). 208 showed 2 halibut (.5%). 95 showed 3 halibut (.2%). 28 showed 4 halibut (.1%). 15 showed 5 halibut (0.0%). 8 showed 6 halibut (.0.0%). 2 showed 7 halibut (0.0%). One person showed 10 halibut (0.0%).

From those numbers, the harvest estimate was 34.2% caught 1 fish; 28.5% caught 2 fish; 19.5% caught 3 fish; 7.7% caught 4 fish; 5.1% caught 5 fish; 3.3% caught 6 fish; 1% caught 7 fish; and .7% caught 10 fish for a total harvest of 1,458 fish. Using the 11.7 expansion factor, 17,058 fish were landed. I don't know why this number doesn't coincide with the other number posted earlier of 16,519 but it could just be rounding errors.

Whether roughly 14,000 fish is enough for a season structure is yet to be determined, but we're hopeful that something can be done to make our halibut trip safer.