(Not meaning to be redundant as I already posted this on SuperFly's thread, but I thought this post would be an appropriate followup to this original GH thread)


I must admit I'm a bit shocked to see that it only took 3 months to bring it back to the front burner.



The title on the agenda is a bit deceiving (perhaps a staff diversion/distraction) because it's not primarily hatchery management that concerned us but rather mismanagement and mis-allocation of WILD stocks, particularly whenever runsize forecasts are marginal or below escapement. If you click on this next link you will see what the commission actually requested from WDFW Region 6 in their "blue sheet".

click here

If you click the next link, you will see an outline of what Region 6 will be presenting in its "green sheet".

click here

What hits me like a ton of bricks is what's MISSING in that briefing.

1) A summary of preseason harvest projections overlaid against run-size predictions.
2) A summary of preseason harvest projections vs ACTUAL postseason harvest.

The main beef's we have with the season setting process are

1) Seasons are crafted (for both sport and commercial) that willfully fish into escapement.
2) The harvest projections on "paper" fish significantly underestimate the fleet's ability to harvest REAL free-swimming fish.

The unavoidable result is chronic underescapement. When I first joined the GH advisory committee 4 years ago, the chinook escapement had exceeded goal in only 2 of the previous 11 years. Not much has changed in the most recent 10 yr window. Look back at the chinook escapements in the blue link and you will see that WDFW completely missed the goal 70% of the time, barely hit it once (134 fish margin), and had fish to spare only twice. That's right, goal has only been exceeded twice in the past 10 yrs.... not surprisingly, they were the same two seasons in the 11 yr interval I first mentioned.