Contrary to popular belief I did NOT create this monster.... it's what we're left with after tribal treaty obligations and the ESA. I will go thru the mathematical convolutions of how this run is parsed up between 3 competing user groups, using as round a numbers as possible to make it easier for folks to wrap their minds around so that the allocations make sense.

The first priority is ESA, and CR upriver spring chinook are managed with a fixed exploitaion rate (impact) of no more than 15%. ESA has determined that we can purposely "take" 15% of the wild run year in and year out without sending the recovery trajectory toward extinction. Doesn't say we're actually going to recover the critters with this harvest strategy, just that "taking" 15% will keep them from going functionally extinct.

The next priority is the treaty obligation.... 50:50. The number of dead fish in our totes and boxes should not exceed the number of dead fish in theirs. There is no arguing that a poopload of hatchery fish are produced with your tax dollars for the singular purpose of fueling their eventual harvest. The problem is that there are way more of them available than we have the ability to harvest given the constraints of ESA.

Because the tribe does NOT fish selectively (they take everything they encounter, hatch or wild), the allocation of "impacts" must be made extremely lop-sided to "help" balance the total numbers of dead fish on each side of the treaty. Of the 15% "take", we get 2% and they get 13%. Because we are allocated such a tiny impact, we are prevented from accessing the lion's share of the available hatchery fish. And even with an overwhelming share of the allowable ESA impact, the treaty tribes' NON-selective fishing strategy prevents them from accessing the lion's share of the available hatchery fish as well.

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Now let's look at how the numbers pencil out on a hypothetical runsize of 200K. Let's say the mark rate on this run is 4:1..... 80% of the fish are hatchery and 20% are wild. That means 160K hatch and 40K wild. ESA says we can't kill more than 15%, in other words 6000 wild fish. The tribes get 5200 of them and we get 800. They expend their allocation as direct harvest. We kill ours as incidental mortalities to gain access to far greater numbers (more than 800) of hatchery spring chinook.

Of our 800 available fish, let's allocate them 50:50 between comm and sport. (There is still a stalemate between OR's 50:50 and WA's 55:45, but for the sake of round numbers, let's stick with 50:50) That means 1%, or 400 dead ESA springers for each camp.

With 10% release mortality assigned to sports, we can handle up to 4000 wild fish before expending our allowable 400 dead fish impact. With a mark ratio of 4:1, that means we can harvest 4 times that many hatch fish.... i.e. 16,000 hatchery spring chinook in the box.

Release mortalities assigned to commies are all over the map from roughly 15% with tooth nets to 40% with gillnets appropriately-sized for chinook. The exact mortality will depend on the proportionate time each gear type is fished during the season. For round numbers, let's call it 30%.... i.e. encounter for encounter, they burn their impacts three times faster than we do at 10% mortality. It means that they will only be able to handle 1/3 as many wild fish as we are allowed.... in this case, 1333 ESA fish. At a mark rate of 4:1 they can access 5333 hatchery fish with their allowable impact.

Total harvest NON-treaty side is now 16,000 sport.... plus 5333 commercial.... plus 800 dead ESA springers. Total 22,133 fish killed. Of the 160K hatch fish available, sports access 10%, and commies access a little over 3%. That means about 87% of the hatch fish are left in the river.

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Now on the treaty side, they legally can harvest up to 5200 wild ESA fish. Of the original 160K hatch fish, we removed ours, leaving only about 139K for the tribes. Of the original 40K wild fish, we removed ours, leaving them with about 39K. Instead of the original 4:1, the mark rate on the remaining fish in the river is now only about 3.5:1 for the upriver tribes. Apply that to the treaty allocation of 5200, and they get access to roughly 18,200 additional hatchery fish for the box... roughly a little more than 11% of the available hatchery fish in the entire runsize. Total catch is 23,400 dead fish.... roughly equal to our own.

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This is the undeniable world of ESA and treaty catch-balancing as we know it today. Sadly, it gives all users a combined access to only one out of every four of the hatchery fish specifically created for harvest.

Bottom line, we burn 15% of the wild run to gain access to 25% of the hatch run.

Such a deal....