cohoangler-
I agree that the terminal gill net fisheries are largely terminal area fisheries with the adult Chinook likely at full maturity size. However my concern was and remains that the typically PS Chinook gill net with a 7 1/4 inch mess net is most efficient at catching fish in that 10 to 16 # and less efficient at capturing the smaller fish (3 year-olds and jacks). As a result the fish that escape the gill net fishery are potentially on the average younger and smaller than those were caught.

I think the case of the hatchery jacks makes that case clearly. The vast majority of the jacks today are less than 22 inches long and most of which easily swim through those Chinook gill net meshes thus skewing the size distribution of the fish escaping the fishery. I believe that historically your thinking about the selectivity of the gill nets during the Chinook fisheries was largely correct but as the size distribution of PS Chinook decreases that target size of those nets remain the same but the size of the target fish has decreased thus more selectivity.

Curt