Carcassman,

A lot of those old in-season run size updates turned out being not so accurate after all. That explains dropping some of them. I think others have been dropped because real-time soft data collection was sacrificed in budget cuts quite a long time ago now. WDFW depends on tribal catch data, and it isn't timely or complete enough to use that way any longer. At least that's what I was told.

More to the point regarding Baker sockeye in-season updating, you can almost take to the bank that 50% of the run (minus pre-trap catch) enters the Baker trap between July 12 and 15. If reliable river harvest data were available on July 15, the total run size can be very accurately updated.

Camo,

The 1500 sockeye for natural production could all fit in Channel Creek, which was restored for the Forest Service under the Baker license over the last two years. Channel Creek fed the old artificial spawning beaches that were used since 1962 to maintain the Baker sockeye run. PSE built new spawning beaches in the 1990s that were upgraded recently, also as part of project re-licensing. Other natural spawners do tend to spawn along the upper river delta where it enters Baker Lake, and that area is dewatered as the reservoir is drawn down over the winter. The artificial spawning beaches are mitigation for natural spawning that is lost to drawdown, so it's hard to complain about that impact. The issue, if any, is that those spawners are fish that might just as well have been harvested from the fishery harvest managers perspective. They have no love for ecosystem function and marine derived nutrients when it means fewer salmon harvested.

Sg