Maybe rec anglers can start claiming forgone opportunity in certain marine areas since returns of 10-20K surplus chinook seems to be pretty common at some hatchery facilities.
SF

Now all get their arms around this fact, it does not matter if the number of surplus is 200k it is the natural production of any salmon that governs harvest, period & put a fork in it. Second that so called surplus is a bogus term as they are the in river sport and tribal opportunity. A hatchery run will have a escapement, give or take a bit, the same as the wild fish. When you do not do that you get what you have in PS.

Rg,
Sorry you took my poor attempt at humor seriously.

No NT in river harvest opportunity on the Skok. None I know of at the Deschutes or Minter creek either.
There is a one fish king limit in I believe only one section of the Green.
The Nisqually got enough kings back that they were handing them out at the hatchery like it was a food bank.
I understand hatcheries have escapement goals, that wild fish shape the management and seasons and that some of the NT share is taken in mix stock saltwater fisheries.

That said, all those fish that end up surplus or whatever you want to call them swim through MA 9, yet we have a likely four day chinook season for a whooping 2,500 or so fish there.
It is a pretty sad state of affairs......
SF

As Rivrguy said, the weak stocks limit the mixed stock fishery. If the total allowable take of all the weak stocks is, say, 200 fish then the mixed stock fishery os over when those 200 are dead. Regardless of what is left.

That is the conundrum of weak stock management and then throwing in hatchery fish. IF the hatchery fish returned to a bay/river where the wild fish were ignored, you could fish them there. Minter, Coulter, the Deschutes should not have any issues with wild fish in the bays/creeks. The hatchery production should be confined, if we really want to have wild fish, to those locations where you can catch everything that is there.

If we want wild stocks, then mixed stock fishing needs to die, at least in the foreseeable future.

If we want wild stocks. . .

Of course we "want" wild stocks. Anybody want to hazard a guess as to how realistic it is in our world to have anything resembling sustainable wild stocks of chinook salmon in Puget Sound tribs? Even if all harvest were curtailed, the chances might rhyme with "zero".

Time for a fresh look at what our goals should be?

fb

We can have wild stocks of salmon in most of the PS streams. Some watersheds, like the Elwha and Skagit, could be fairly large. And they would be sustainable.

But, if you want to kill a lot of them, then wild won't work. We have shown that we can have wild trout, rather large fisheries, but C&R.

You are right in that we need to clearly define goals. Did a chapter in an AFS book on models for salmonid management that examined such a review. The fishermen wanted to harvest 20K Chinook annually. And recover the wild run. It was pretty much impossible, We do need to very clearly articulate goals and not use the warm and fuzzies of "wild fish", "sustainable fisheries" but put solid numbers to it.

CM-

Whether we fish or not the harsh reality is that we will continue to lots of wild Puget Sound every day of year. Eliminating fishing will not end the killing of wild salmon; they will continue to die from a large variety of habitat impacts. In fact in many systems ending fishing will have little effect on the rate of decline of those populations or change the ultimate result -extinction.

Sticking with the Stillaguamish example over the last 40 years the South US fisheries (Washington fisheries) have reduced their impacts by approximately 75%. In the same time period the capacity of the basin to produce wild Chinook has declined by 60%. Fishing was a major driver in that status of the resource how can both of the above be true?

Again I go back to the question of whether fishing is a legitimate use of some of the salmon productivity or should it all productivity be used to support habitat uses? Regardless of the answer to the question this myth that ending fishing will make a meaningful difference ultimate fate of the resource must end if there is to be any chance at meaningful recovery. Holding out the promise of ending fishing will lead to recovery remains a crutch that allows society to delay taking painful actions that might actually make a difference.

Curt

Unless I missed something CM & myself did not advocate ending fisheries as a whole, only mixed stock harvest. That habitat productivity has decreased is a given but with that decline one must reduce harvest to match that productivity stream by stream. That is not possible when you max out harvest when the adults are all mixed up together let alone add in BC & AK. When mixed stock fisheries end, and they will, it is then and only then that watershed by watershed can a true picture of just what is the status of salmonids and what is possible or not possible to accomplish with the concept of recovery. Habitat degradation & harvest are both the key elements of this thing with salmon and it is rather short sited to think they are not connected.

As Rivrguy noted, it is the mixed stock fisheries I am referring to. It is not just the salmon fisheries, but the forage-fish fisheries, the trawls that take salmon as by catch, and so on. It is also the (lack of) pinniped harvest. And, it is habitat degradation which is why triage is so necessary.

Why are were trying to recover Green River Chinook, or Cedar, or some of the rather urban settings? Now, the whole of the OP north of Grays Harbor has a chance. There are some serious long term decisions that need making but we, as a society, stay bunkered in our silos defending our piece of the puzzle.

This all made me think back a bit. When I became involved in salmon restoration it was all about saving native populations. Then the politics of fish came full bore and it was "wild" fish or anything with a ad fin. That pissed me off then and still does. What native runs we have left should be of the utmost importance and a great efforts should happen to save them and allow them to flourish. To create a true " wild " salmon in a genetically degraded stock is a process of many generations under perfect conditions as evolution is a very slow process. Human impacts on salmon is a very rapid process and that is the rub. We need to choose and I choose native populations for max effort and then sort the rest out the best we can as many so called wild populations are simply hatchery established runs with a fin. I choose natives survival first.

When I first started in the business we (the steelhead group in WDG) actually tried to develop and implement identifiers for steelhead. Native, as in basically the original genotype and evolving in the watershed. Wild, anything that successfully reproduces in the wild. Hatchery, spawned and incubated in a hatchery environment. Tried to get all the discussions to follow this.

I would disagree a bit with Rivrguy on evolution. If we stop putting in hatchery fish and let sufficient spawners escape then we will very quickly get "wild" fish. Over time, they will adapt with the first few generations showing the most adaptation.

Back in 1950s a few thousand (I believe Skeena) pinks were let loose in the Great Lakes. By the 1990s they had adapted and spread through the system. Plus, genetic analysis showed they were more different from the donor stock that many "good" species. I also applied one of the genetic clock equations and the solution was that the genetic difference took, I believe, 5,000 years to achieve. Except that it only took 40.

Probably Founder Effect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder_effect?wprov=sfti1

Ah yeah we had that discussion before CM and if I recall neither of us budged a inch. So my position. Yes in two or three generations minus hatchery and other influences the fish will stabilize and then begin the process developing genetics tuned to that stream. This is where we always differed. That is not preserving a native fish / wild fish but rather starting a evolutionary process to create a native fish. So if you have a stock that is naturally spawning but is the same genetics as the hatchery fish then why now everyplace? Everything has a beginning and end and sooner or later that hatchery will be closed and done. The fish will then start the process of evolution that we are discussing. In streams where hatchery genetics are the same fin or no fin plan and manage for the time the hatchery is gone and do not make it worse. Put our restoration efforts into saving the native runs which survive today. Those are the genetics of a thousand years of evolution and need to survive. Where the dirty deed is done begin to manage and plan to not make it worse but utilize the production for harvest. Same discussion as Bristol and I ain't moved a inch.

I agree that if we have native fish we should keep them, keep the hatchery fish out, and let them evolve. Where the wild genetics may have been compromised, but habitat remains, let the fish sort it out. When the habitat is toasted, plant the **it out of it.