Ah it is about pay back for the years that WDFW DID NOT produce the smolts required. Aberdeen Lake Hatchery does not have the capacity to rear that many smolt so the plan is to do the required yearly smolt at ALH and the payback for years WDFW failed to do as required be reared and released at Bingham on the Satsop.

When this was presented I blew a gasket and cleared the moon which I had to apologize ( rightly so ) for that. Then I leaned this, the Wynoochee has an escapement goal of 7168 and has been on average achieving less than a third of that with the lowest return in twenty years being 2006 of 696 adults.

Bottom line is even if ALH could do the payback mitigation the wild stock could not take the combined bay, tidewater, river harvest. Even with C&R inriver the added pressure by fishers would likely make a bad situation much worse. Damned if you do damned if you don't here and I think rather than do the blame game that just maybe the solution put forward R-6 Director Philips might be the only one.

Now that said it is not a silver bullet because the Satsop has not been making escapement either but I think that is a harvest driven issue that comanagers have not addressed.