I think you are giving them too much credit saying this is done with sophisticated math---dont ya know, they use a dart board with the target=Escapement needed for Sporties and the remainder of the board showing numbers to shut the Sporties down.


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Published: Thursday, January 10, 2008

Popular fishery to stay closed

By Wayne Kruse,
Herald writer

Bad news for local steelhead fishermen comes with the word that the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife will not open the popular Skagit/Sauk river catch and release fishery this year. The long-running late season, often noted for producing some of the best steelheading in the area and particularly for large fish, is normally open March 1 to April 30 on the Sauk, and March 16 to April 30 on the Skagit.

Reason for the closure, according to the agency's District 14 fish biologist Brett Barkdull, in La Conner, is that the wild winter steelhead preseason forecast of about 5,200 fish is below the spawning escapement "floor."

"We need a minimum of 6,000 returning wild winters on the Skagit system to open a recreational fishery," Barkdull said.

He said the good news is that he doesn't expect this closure to represent a trend.

"It's more likely to be a one-year anomaly," he said. "Fish managers up and down the coast have experienced poor ocean survival on steelhead and salmon smolts which went to sea in 2005, and it's showing up in returns of several species on other rivers. Last year was not a great coho year around here, for instance, and those fish were from the same 2005 smolt class."