Now that we are clear that this whole revision of quotas is all about back-room wheeling and dealing between the trollers and the WCBA, it is clear that 20,000 coho to the sport fleet were traded for 5,000 chinook to the trollers.


Official quota explanation

There are a few lingering questions that are not so clear:

1) Are we sports getting 20,000 additional hatchery coho? Or are we getting 20,000 total coho? In either case, why did the original Westport sport quota of 74,900 get revised DOWN to 54,900? What am I missing here?

2) Where does the 10,000 number fit in to all this? Does that mean the counter starts over on Aug 29, and all coho (fin or no fin) will be counted as part of that 10,000? How did they arrive at the 10,000 coho that are now officially left to harvest before shutting the season down?

3) If you look at the Westport catch summary thru Aug 22, we have taken only 29% of the revised hatchery coho quota (15,633 out of 54,000) That should leave us with a residual of about 39,300 hatchery coho left to catch. Why would sports need an additional 20,000 coho from the trollers, if we can't even catch the ones that were already allocated to us?

This goes way beyond "fuzzy math".... anybody care to explain this? Or is everyone as lost as I am?


Here's my best shot at trying to figure out their warped rationale. Before the swap, we had 39,300 hatchery coho left to catch. The trollers "gave" us 20,000 more for 5,000 of our chinook. Now we have 59,300 hatchery coho in our pot. WDFW figures that the impact on wild coho in trying to harvest all those 59.300 hatchery coho would be equivalent to killing all coho (fin or no fin) but quitting at 10,000 fish? Does that mean they are figuring on us killing 5900 (roughly 10% of 59,300) wild fish and 4100 clipped fish? or am I just way off base with this analysis? This is all conjecture so please correct me if you know the answer. Anyone?