Here's a post I put on another board this morning...and it's easily the 20th time I've had to explain the most basic fundamentals of setting seasons on the Lower Columbia River for spring Chinook. If more sportfishermen would internalize the facts about how seasons are set, I think they would feel very differently about using commercial selective gear on the lower Columbia for spring Chinook.

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The take of hatchery spring Chinook in the LCR is not based on a quota of hatchery fish caught, it is based on how many hatchery fish can you catch while not exceeding your quota on allowable ESA mortalities.

Without changing the "allocation" one iota, if the commercial guys cut their mortality by 50%, they will automatically double the amount of hatchery fish they are able to harvest while killing their exact same quota of ESA fish.

This is without changing the allocation at all.

We allocation battles that take place every two years regarding the spring Chinook fishery is not a battle over hatchery fish...it's a battle over what percentage of the non-tribal 2% allowable ESA impacts gets allocated to us, or gets allocated to the commercial guys.

When we get a 60/40 split in our favor, we don't get 60% of the hatchery fish harvest...we get to use 60% of the allowable ESA impacts on the wild fish. Since our mortality is roughly 1/3 of what the commercial guys do with gillnets, we end up with a lot more than 60% of the hatchery fish...we actually get a whole lot more.

Look at it this way, for example:

The non-tribal share of ESA impacts is 2% of the wild run.

Also just for illustrative purposes, let's assume the entire run of spring Chinook is 100,000, and that 10% of them are wild fish. That means that there are 10,000 wild fish in the run, and the non-tribals altogether get to kill 200.

With the 60/40 split, that means we get to kill 120, and the commercial guys get to kill 80.

To kill our 120 wild fish, with a 10% mortality on released wild fish, that means we have to encounter 1200 wild fish. To do that, we'd at the same time encounter (harvest) 12,000 hatchery fish.

That's our take of hatchery fish, 12K.

For the commercial guys to kill their 80 wild fish, with a 33% mortality, they will encounter 240 wild fish. That works out to harvesting 2,400 hatchery fish.

There is only one variable that is different between the two groups...release mortality on wild fish.

If the commercial guys drop their mortality down to 5%, they now would have to encounter 1600 wild fish to hit their limit...that's their mortality rate multiplied by encounters...to kill their 80 ESA springers.

1600 wild fish encounters comes with 16,000 hatchery fish encounters, i.e., 16,000 fish in the totes.

With absolutely no change whatsoever in the quotas or allocations, they have just increased their harvest of hatchery fish by 667%.

This happens downstream from you, you who already complain bitterly about how bad fishing is behind gillnets...think it's bad now, wait until they catch almost seven times as many hatchery fish before you even get to fish for them.

As I've pointed out dozens of times, this is with NO change in the allocation.

If the allocation were changed to 50/50 on the allowable impacts, or worse, then just plug the numbers into the formula and you will see just how much worse it gets, and fast.

There are undeniable benefits to wild steelhead, and probably to sturgeon, too, if they are able to reduce their mortality to 5%...without a doubt.

If the people supporting this change said "we know this will screw spring Chinook fishing badly, but we think it's worth it to save the steelhead and sturgeon that die in gillnets", then they'd be honest about the effects of this change, and then we could all decide if we want to support this or not.

However, mainly due to ignorance about how LCR seasons are set (based on allowable ESA impacts, not hatchery fish quotas), many supporters of this think that the commercial guys will catch the same amount of hatchery fish, far less wild fish, and everything will be super duper...but they'd be very, very mistaken if they believe this.

Others suggest that the DFW's will somehow magically change the allowable ESA impacts...which is naiive for two reasons. First, they're set by the feds, and not by the States, and the States are always trying to get the allowable impacts raised, not lowered, to provide better access to hatchery fish. It's not a state issue.

Second, even if the allowable impacts were lowered, then they lower for everyone...it would just reduce the total catch for everybody, not just the commercial fleet.

The most important take home message from this is: harvest rates on hatchery fish in the LCR spring Chinook fishery are not based on how many hatchery fish you catch, they are based on how many ESA fish you are allowed to kill in your fishery. The lower your mortality rate, the more hatchery fish you get to catch. The same amount of wild fish die, but as you lower your mortality rate, your hatchery harvest rate goes up.

Fish on...

Todd