Thought I'd share this graphic of historic aggregate GH chinook escapement performance relative to goal.



Emphasis on AGGREGATE basin wide goal (Hump plus Chehalis combined). Note that the goal has only been met once in the past 5 years... even with the CTC-approved e-goal reduction approved in 2014.

Of particular significance is year 2012... which was the first year of the modern-day MEGA wave of big regional returns from north-migrating chinook stocks. Yet GH somehow still failed to make goal. Why? Because the exploitation rate on GH chinook that year was 86%.

You heard it right.... 86% mortality directly attributable to fishing. Enough to finally put GH on the radar at PFMC as a stock subjected to overfishing (ER > 78%).

So putting this into bigger perspective, the escapement of just under 14K that year represented only 14% of the adult return (excluding any allowances for natural predation by marine mammals). Extrapolate that number and you get a run-size of 100K wild GH chinook!

100K!

The available chinook habitat in this basin is WAY MORE than capable of producing healthy returns of fall kings. It's just a matter of finding a fairer way of getting a few of them back for the home team.
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"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey)

"If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman)


The Keen Eye MD
Long Live the Kings!