I believe I read the same thing right here from smalma

"It is interesting how many salmon management experts are on this site and taking part in this thread.

I wonder how you folks would have fared say last year if you were in charge of the management of our salmon. As many of you no doubt recall the coho fishing this time of year last year was off the charts. The various beach fisheries were about as good as it gets and the creel checks also indicated exceptional fishing. Presumably if we are going to make early in-season adjustments in fish runs the sport catches are were we would likely look; with high catch rates (especially if there is substantial effort) would equate a large run (more fish??).

As you may recall the Snohomish forecast for wild coho (driven by record estimates of wild smolt abundances) was approximately 50,000 fish. By all counts the coho fishing last August and most of September was exceptional and the creel checks at Everett confirm that excellent fishing. Huge number of boats being checked with high catch rates. In fact in the last 30 years those kinds of numbers have been seen only twice. In both of those years the wild coho escapement on the Snohomish were in excess of 1/4 million spawners. Also keep in mind that the wild smolt numbers were 3 million and the parent escapement (the spawners that produced the 2015 adults was 130,000). Would you internet biologist updated the 2015 run size to something larger than 50,000???

Most of you seem more than willing to adjust this year's run size on much more shaky information - incidental angler reports and number of jumping fish. The harsh reality is that the only potential in-season coho model run size adjustments (especially for wild fish) require terminal net catches (tribal) in late September and early October to make any realistic update. Does anyone think with little harvest in front of the terminal areas that early returns might be skewed from past years?

The other issue is that folks seem to have problems with the 2016 forecasts. Again looking at the Snohomish wild coho where the 2015 escapement was 13,000 with a potential total runszie of between 18,000 and 26,000. Given that the ocean conditions in the spring of 2015 (the year that this years adults went to sea as smolts) was much the same as 2014 and the total number of wild smolts were less than 60% of the 2014 numbers (1.6 million verus 3 million) what would you have forecasted.

Anyone willing to offer up their 2015 updates or 2016 forecasts which surely would be substantially better than those produced be the co-managers?

Curt"