eyeFISH-

During the late August September trips we found a higher than expected portion of unclipped fish in the catch. Of course that is a small sample size and does really tell us whether there more unclipped or less clipped fish than expected. The WB creel checks showed the same thing; out of 635 fish 153 or 24% were unclipped. This is roughly twice percentage expected from the forecasts.

That said I did notice that the latest hatchery escapement report (11/9) showed that the 3 WB hatcheries had handled and released a good number of "wild" fish. The total for the 3 hatcheries was 1,586 adults. Don't know what portion of the potential escapement those wild fish represent. However the numbers at a similar time had 864 "wild" fish released in 2016 and 1,013 in 2015. Could it be that there might be more than 2,000 NOR spawners?.

Curt