I fish almost everyday in Area 11 when it is open. The fish checkers never ask me about wild or sublegal encounters. Just what time I started fishing and then take a scale sample. length and check for a coded wire tag if I have a legal chinook(or coho). WDFW is using the catch data from the WDFW and tribal test boats which are fishing the area. Also, my observation from my catches and those of other fishermen I know is that 80-90% of the legal size chinook are unclipped. The word on the street is that most of the hatchery chinook during the pandemic year were not clipped because the hatchery workers stayed home and no one was available for clipping. The vast majority of the maturing chinook have adipose fins.
The reason for the small harvested chinook numbers is not because of a low catch. It is because so many of the larger fish have to be released because they are unclipped.