I was on the PSC website last night looking at exploitation rates on WA coast chinook. Happened to take a peek at the Snake River falls while I was at it. As noted above, Lyons Ferry Hatchery is one of the principal LSRCP hatcheries involved with recovering Snake River fall chinook. It's also one of the indicator stocks followed by the PSC.

Based on CWT recoveries in the two most recent years in the report...

http://www.psc.org/publications/technical-reports/technical-committee-reports/chinook/

SRF's are currently being exploited at 65%. That means 65% of the tags showed up in fisheries up and down the west coast including inside terminal areas. 34.5% of the tags showed up as escapement in the Snake. The other 0.5% showed up elsewhere (strayed to others basins)

Does anyone else find it ironic that an ESA-listed species is managed for 65% exploitation?

So naturally, I had to find out, " Where did all the fish die?"

Using the appropriately weighted averages for the two catch years 2013 and 2014 (modern-day RECORD returns of upriver Columbia kings)... just over half the fish harvested were taken in the ocean before a single Snake fish crossed the Columbia bar.

Within that ocean piece, AK/BC took just over 62% while local fleets here in the PNW took 38%.

Within that local PNW ocean catch, commercials took nearly 4 of every 5 (78%).

....

For the other half of the fish that were harvested in the big river itself, 7 of every 10 were taken by gillnets while the rest were taken with hook/line by guys like us.