Going from memory the reason was with no directed Chinook fishery for commercials with the few encounters they have the few they impact is not enough to require that they release them. If the encounter numbers rise to the level of significant then they do require the use of recovery boxes but I do not know what the number to be significant is as it would vary with run size.

2021 harvest model has NT commercial at 19 total Chinook impacts which is nothing in the big picture. If your upset that nt commercials have 19 impacts while rec have 271 impacts with C&R I imagine I can find a commercial who will gladly explain why they think rec's impacts being 14X theirs is not fare.

Frankly with the GH Policy ending targeted non treaty commercial Chinook fisheries, requiring 3 days the river being net free, and harvest limiters for run size under 110% of escapement goals bitching about 19 Chinook impacts on the commercial side is a bit of a reach.

Comparing the two fisheries operating under two very different requirements is not really a defensible mental exercise. Considering that prior to the massive ocean intercepts we have now the GH NT fishery in GH was Chinook and hatchery Coho. In 2021 they are limited to around 20% rec share of wild Coho and around 66% of the NT share of Chum and impacts for Chinook barely move the graph bar off the bottom of the page. Actually to put it bluntly NT rec fishers have little to bitch about with the sharing with commercials and not in past years either since the implementation of GH Policy.