The PS steelhead thread about survival bottlenecks brought me back to this thread about using acoustic telemetry in Alaska's Cook Inlet.

Well after getting called out repeatedly by a driftnetter on the AK board to show him that these fish were physically swimming thru waters actually open to gillnetting, I did an even more detailed review to confirm that was indeed the case.

In the process, I discovered a 13th fish.... but it, too never made it out of UCI to ascend the Kenai.

Todd was wondering if 70% immediate marine mortality on juvenile steelhead was good bad or normal? Who really knows without a baseline. But what about full grown adult spawners? What's an acceptable mortality on a PRIME adult spawner on the last leg of its journey home?

So BIG picture... 13 tagged kings enter UCI, but only 7 of them make it to the Kenai River. I'm getting raked over the coals by the local yokels to suggest it's related to gillnets.

Anybody think it's even half ass plausible that any naturally occurring salmon killer can take out 46% of the adult population in the span of 2-3 weeks?