G-Man,

I'm certainly no expert on the subject but the tribes get to "fish" earlier because this is one way how the fishery managers estimate a run forcast. They have compiled years of data; catch efforts, run timing, run strength, etc. They throw all this data into a database and this information helps them predict the run size. Since the netted chinooks are already dead, they keep them rather than throwing them overboard because this would cause more bad publicity and guys would get on this board and complain that the tribes are wasting all their fish.