Yes, we have faithfully stuck to the plan for the past three years.

The biggest beef I have is the recurring theme of underestimating the fishing power of the sport fleet.... whether it's outright harvest or release impact.... chinook exploitation at the hands of anglers has been repeatedly and horribly understated in the harvest model. Some recent examples.

2006... model predicted 215 kings would be taken in the bay in 2 weeks... actual harvest was 1065.

2007... model predicted 501 fish would be taken in the bay in a one-month season. We blew through them in less than 2 weeks.

In the past three years, we have seen some VERY generous rec seasons to target some mighty big runs of coho. The sport fleet has progressively gained time and area to target coho, yet our predicted impact on chinook keeps going down in the model.

Here's the rub folks....

Every time that model understates the harvest potential or catch/release impact of the rec fishery, it frees up more dead chinook to spend on gillnetting for coho.

Take home lesson... the better we can hold WDFW accountable to accurately estimating the true harvest/exploitation efficiency of the rec fleet, the fewer the number of days that can be allocated to gillnetting in 2A/2D.