These comments were sent to me and from my seat in the nose bleed section do a good job of capturing this perspective.

Mike,

It was great that the co-managers decided to “make more progress toward spawner escapement objectives”. With the recreational fishermen giving up 766 Chinook we now almost meet the basin wide escapement goal for NOR Chinook. Unfortunately the new model shows that we made the basin wide escapement shortfall even worse for both coho and chum. All three species still fail to meet their basin wide escapement goals.

This would have been a great time to address the imbalance for chum in the original plan. The QIN originally intended to harvest 8,696 chum which is 3,546 fish more than their 50% share of the harvestable total and nearly equal to the predicted chum under escapement of 3,151 fish. So with chum facing significant under escapement the co-managers decide to increase harvest for both groups driving the under escapement to 3,556 fish. This model indicates that the QIN plan to boost their harvest to 8,858 chum or 3,708 fish over their share resulting in all of the escapement short fall. Overall I would suggest that the co-managers failed to make progress toward spawner escapement objectives while giving up significant recreational opportunity.
_________________________
Dazed and confused.............the fog is closing in