Originally Posted By: Salmo g.


Maybe we should advocate a recreational slice of chinook impact to the river fishery in the interest of reducing available impacts to the NT net fishery. I'd go for that if it would fly.


Not only will it fly, it is PRECISELY what the Mgt Plan directs us to do.

A low Tier 3 Chehalis chinook run-size is to be managed primarily for recreation.... marine AND in-river. Any remaining fish in the harvestable share can then be expended as impact to fuel a gillnet fishery for a Tier 4 Chehalis coho run, a Tier 4 Hump chinook run, and a Tier 4 Hump coho run.

The harvest model MUST reasonably account for Chehalis chinook that die in the course of gillnetting all three of those Tier 4 stocks. It must also reasonably account for the catch efficiency of the modern fish-savvy rec fleet targeting chinook in the bay and mainstem Chehalis. We fund the rec chinook fishery obligation first, then fund the gillnet fisheries with the remaining crumbs.
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