I'll not disagree that that Chehalis Basin escapement goals are woefully TOO low. The Satsop itself could probably support the ENTIRE chinook goal for the Basin. But MSY-entrenched harvest management absent ESA will NEVER allow us to test the limits of carrying capacity. There simply isn't enough restraint out there to make it happen.

So for now, managers are content to prosecute a 60-65% exploitation rate on coastal chinook ( and I have ZERO reason to believe Satsop is anywhere below that) with 75% of that exploitation happening BEFORE a single fish swims over the bar. Bottom line, half the current gravel-borne production (3/4 of 2/3) is lost to harvest before a single Satsop fish swims past Westport.

Sorry.... we're NEVER gonna get to a point where we can test the production potential of the gravel in the context of that harvest framework.

When I first moved to Grays Harbor nearly THREE decades ago, I probed around inquiring about escapement goals. I was told that the 12,400 basin-wide Chehalis chinook goal hadn't been looked at in over 20 years. In fact my search led me to RivrGuy (though he didn't know me from Adam at the time) and I had difficulty extracting myself from what would ultimately be a 2.5 hour conversation. At the time, he informed me that Satsop was the backbone of chinook production for the system.

Well nearly 50 years after the fact, the e-goal for the system was finally re-visited... and true to form in the MSY/Ricker construct, where by definition there is ALWAYS a harvestable surplus that can be statistically calculated, the new and improved goal is now only ~9700. Predictably, the MSY mantra and Ricker curve produced yet another DECREMENT in the Chehalis e-goal. Gee-willickers... the problem isn't that we're NOT putting enough spawners on the gravel for sustainability; we're putting too many. Things that make ya go, "Hmmmmmmm?"