Downriggin,

Great stuff. Some very useful tips. I recognize the catch rates should improve significantly when the runs arrive (although so do the number of fishermen!). So winter vs summer should really be looked at separately.

One thing you mention that I wondered about was whether the catch rate declines on busy days. Does it matter how much competition is out there?

I looked back at the creel surveys again for the Pt Defiance boathouse & ramp. For all of July through the 20th, ie all three weeks, there were 769 anglers sampled and 98 fish. This supports the average of 1.3 fish per 10 angler days.

However--in this very rough analysis--I separated the days into two categories: those when more than 50 anglers were surveyed and those when less than 50 anglers were surveyed. This assumes the days with more surveys are because there are more fishermen and not just more surveyors, not that this would necessarily change anything. If anything, they probably have more surveyors on busier days so the two are related.

On those days with more than 50 anglers surveyed the catch rate actually averaged less than 1 fish per 10 angler days (.9). On those days when less than 50 anglers were surveyed, the catch rate was much higher: 2 fish per 10 angler days. On the extreme days, with more than 100 anglers surveyed, the catch rate declines to .7 fish per 10 angler days.

I think this supports your theory about avoiding competition. If the 80/20 rule does not hold (i.e. it is not true that some guys always catch fish and some guys never do), then your odds of catching a fish are nearly 3 times higher on the light angler days than on the busy ones. Wow!

Re: Pt. Defiance, it seems likely that this area's popularity is self-fulfilling. More anglers on the water = more fish caught = more popularity = more anglers on the water, etc. The real test would be the number of fish per angler days, which--based only on this limited sample--seems to decline on busy days even though the total number of fish caught is higher.