Ok folks as I posted before I requested the harvest numbers for the QIN but staff said QIN had not provided them. They also said as soon as they have the data it would be provided and this arrived today from Mike Scharpf. I think he has done a good job providing insight for our fisheries so far.


As K-- explained below, market for salmon this year is way down and is reflected in the effort. Even when anglers fished, most didn’t fish the whole time available, many left after the prime tide. We heard similar stories from the treaty anglers. QIN’s pre-season catch predictions for the Chehalis were 2,039 Chinook, 28,815 coho, and 8,101 chum through the first 4 weeks of their fishery. They reported catching 289 Chinook, 3,562 coho, and 7,398 chum landed. And for the Humptulips side, pre-season predictions were 1,022 Chinook, 6,087 coho, and 2,961 chum, actuals are 59 Chinook, 768 coho, and 3,471 chum. On Oct 27th, they closed the remainer of their fall season due to concerns with the number of coho returning this year. They numbers are still preliminary and may change, but probably not much.

As for the non-treaty side, the pre-season predictions for 2A/D were 83 Chinook, 7,002 coho, and 6,155 chum, actuals are 9 Chinook (hatchery origin), 1,474 coho, and 3,121 chum. To help put things in a little better perspective, the pre-season predicted catches are based on years with an average of 14 boats participating. There were 6 this year and only 5 the last week. No one participated in the 2C fishery, weather wasn’t great and just wasn’t worth it with price for fish.

During both fisheries, the number of coho per fish ticket was lower than pre-season forecasting, and on the treaty side, as low as the 2015 year. Part of the concern that they expressed. Combining low coho per ticket and lower effort explains some of the commercial catch numbers. Thankfully, some of the in-river indicators are pointing to a few more fish than what was observed in the commercial fishery. Wynoochee trap counts are ahead of average, and we are seeing large numbers of coho at the Elk Creek trap. Hope they keep coming.