Todd -
Every sport salmon season in the state that might encounter a Puget Sound wild chinook (ESA listed) is potentionally limited by the allowable impacts to that stock. Those impacts (dead fish) are estimated (modeled) to include the directed take (those harvested) as well as the indirect take (hooking mortality, net drop out, etc.). For sport fisheries the indirect take is the product of the number of encounters times the hooking mortality (for chinook marine fisheries that is ususally between 10 and 20%).

As you know there are a number of parties who would prefer that fishing impacts on listed chinook were held to zero. A zero imapct standard would mean no salmon fishing (hatchery or wild chinook, coho, pink, etc) in any marine waters of the the state as well the rivers of Puget Sound. The future of those fisheries is dependent on the co-managers successfully continuing to demostrate that the impacts to listed stocks under their Fisheries Management Plan doesn't substantially jeopardize the recovery of those stocks.

The deliberate or unwilling sabotage of the data quality by sport anglers could limit the utility of slective fisheries such as this year's area 5/6 chinook fishery jeopardizing this or other future fisheries. Perhaps you can see why your unfortunate choice of words raised a red-flag.

Kev -
Hopefully you no longer consider this detour to your question irrelevant.

Tight lines
Smalma