To my knoledge our salmon and their salmon feed in the same places. When the fish get down here they are at the tail end of their feeding. When we had the very large Coho last year they didnt have them in Alaska, meaning they stacked on those extra pounds at the end before they hit the rivers, meaning we had good ocean conditions with lots of bait in the sound strait and coast. Obviosly I dont believe in the whole ocean condition theory as a whole it is one factor of many. Just by itself it cant make that large of an impact.

Here is my theory to why some places have consistant good fish runs like west side Kodiak rivers and others are so inconsistant like washington rivers.

Even with bad Ocean Conditions and varing environmental conditions the Kodiak runs can sustain high return numbers and surpluss fish. Surpluss fish are the Key. Without those surplus fish any one factor can make the run crash below a level to sustain itself and then the spiral starts down.

Down here the surplus fish are gone we leave just enough fish to keep the numbers up to the escapement numbers we got from the 70's and 80''s after the damage was already done. I believe are rivers are running far below the very minimum escapement thats why the runs are so affected by different factors. Any one factor can have drastic affect. Thats why are fish runs are so unpredictable down here . We manage our fish on a fine line.

Its pretty easy to see. The river I described has almost a 3 million fish run. Maybe thats 2 million over what it needs for maximum capacity. What happens if you harvest those two million fish like MSY says to do and you get bad ocean conditions floods droughts siltation or any one factor. You get what we currently have in Washington.

Our escapement are Kept so low that the fish never get the chance to rebound. If we are expected to get just a few extra fish than our set escapement goals we harvest them. Why do you think we have such highs and lows. We get a run 5,000 over escapement so we up the effort for harvest and get those 5,000 extra fish then that winter we have floods then the following summer we get a drought. Then we have low egg and fry survival and the outgoing smolt numbers are down. Then we get an elnino and the spanish makeral and pelicans eat up a half of the surviving smolt. Then the next generation is on the ESA list.

If we had those 5,000 extra spawners as the safety nett that nature intended we wouldnt have the drepessed run the next generation due to all the environmental factors. those 5,000 extra spawner and 8,000,000 extra eggs they would have layed is natures design to keep the river at carrying capacity even with environmental factors that dont favor the fish.