Below are 4 of the slides shared with us by WDFW about the salmon forecasts in 2024 for Puget Sound and the coast. I've written extensively about it here: Puget Sound Salmon Forecasts 2024

The bottom line is that there's gonna be another solid set of seasons in Puget Sound, likely similar to 2023. Coho looks really strong this year and Chinook is decent. The biggest challenges are going to be working through the issues caused by the weaker natural origin chinook stocks and making sure the BS from 2023 during our Marine Area 11 and 10 seasons doesn't occur again in 2024.

There are a lot of really good folks from the rec angler community working on these issues though, so I'm cautiously optimistic we are going to have some solid fishing opportunities in Marine Areas.

Also, the ocean is looking good again due to a solid run of fall chinook and coho on the Columbia River. Can't wait!

Using recent 10 year averages ia a way of covering up a multitude of sins. South Sound, alone, used to return a million coho and Nooksack added another 250K. Nooksack/Samish Chinook was somewhat north of 100K.

They keep narrowing the horizon of what we compare things to that a slight increase in a pittance looks huge and sells licenses.

Well on one hand, there is some hopeful optimism with the posting, and obviously on the other hand, a bit of the Debbie Downer.

Should we keep our old boats and gear for a fish or three at Dalco on the incoming, or just sell all the gear and pay for a trip to The west coast of Vancouver, or maybe SE Alaska for some MA 11 fish ?

Of course the Stilly will be closed for 10-11 months as usual. No hope for the Snohomish system as well as they can use chinook excuse to keep it closed until December now. Just wondering what the next river will be to close down ? Probably the Nooksack or Samish . Guess i am not optimistic.

Don't be such a downer, MA 10 and 11 are open RIGHT NOW to go lay waste to a pile of 22 inch rezzies, which should soak up enough impacts so that we don't get to fish those August ocean returners. Yay!
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Hmmm, good thinking, at least the Rezzies don’t get scooped up by the Canuck and Alaskan folks...

Interesting that the Green has no forecast at all for Chum.

There are a lot of things in the works to try to ensure the MA11 disaster doesn't happen again. The NoF call included almost 4 hours of Q&A and a good chunk of that was discussing MA11.

The impacts right now are separate from August fisheries. It's true though that our blackmouth fisheries are kind of a joke now. A lot of that has to do with the fact that yearling chinook are not being raised at the same level as before. And that has to do with the smolt-adult survival of fish spending more time in Puget Sound is not good.

I did a little math exercise and found it was causing around 2000-2500$ per keeper in the winter season in terms of yearling chinook. Now of course that's all about seals and sealions...

There's no question it used to be better, but 700k coho is still gonna make it pretty easy. And if you couldn't catch a coho last year, you either weren't trying or don't know how to catch salmon.

“. And that has to do with the smolt-adult survival of fish spending more time in Puget Sound is not good. ”

Unless we’re talking Cutthroat, which of course we’re not.


“ Interesting that the Green has no forecast at all for Chum.”

Kinda wondering the same thing. The Chum have been fairly strong here on the Green for a good number of seasons now, and last year left a lot of dead carcasses rolling down the gravel.

Maybe the numbers are still in the counting process...

Interesting...do seals and sea lions not eat cutthroat?

Also, I think the Green is aggregated under Central / South Sound which is almost 500k fish. I'm willing to bet a bunch of those are Green as the chum run has been fantastic lately.

The Green is interesting. Up through the 80s it was considered that there were no chums or pinks in the river. Few showed up. It was believed that WWII and the pollution into the river from war-related industries wiped them out.

Then, they came back and in the 90s/2000s I think both runs passed the million mark. The Muckleshoots actually wanted WDFW to extricate the pinks because they interfered with Chinook netting. I don't know the numbers now, but for a while the Green really cooked.

About the time the Green was cooking Kennedy Creek alone saw escarpments that approached 100k; regularly well north of 50K and the other deep SS streams were similarly abundant. This, of course, was after the intense 10 and 11 GN and PS fisheries. Plus, we had some neat sport fisheries in the creeks. I fished Kennedy once this year and saw one or two carcasses.

Well that is fantastic to hear. Anybody know what (if any) constraining stocks have an impact on season setting in 11 and 13? Aside from the confused Stilly chinook of course?

Also, I don't see Minter chin/coho in the mix on their figures, just the big rivers in the south sound.

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The major stocks of concern are the Stilly, Skagit summer/fall and the Snohomish.

There's a question about the Nisqually, but that has more to do with harvest share than conservation.

Also, the Nooksack forecast hasn't shown up yet and that river could be a problem.

I suspect there will be more challenges on MA11 than MA13, but the South Sound may get similar quota numbers as last year. We just gotta make sure the sub-legal thing doesn't cut the season short again.

"A curious thing happens when fish stocks decline: People who aren't aware of the old levels, accept the new ones as normal. Over generations, societies adjust their expectaions downward to match prevailing conditions"... Kennedy Warne, National Geographic, April 2007.

sad but trueah. - James hetfield

I hope that someday we can get some time back in MA 9 in October for coho. The Snohomish wilds will play a part in that.
Though I’m beach bound, last year there were some very nice fish around especially that last week of September. Would have liked to continue fishing through Oct like we used to be able to do so.
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" It's true though that our blackmouth fisheries are kind of a joke now. A lot of that has to do with the fact that yearling chinook are not being raised at the same level as before. "

So true of the blackmouth fishery, which are the "yearling chinook"
mentioned above. In Marine Area 10, the winter Chinook (yearling" fishery guidelines are 4,953 total encounters, 953 unmarked encounters, and 4,181 sublegal encounters.

In the last several years, yearling (resident blackmouth) released make up about 3% of the total hatchery fish released, and declining. Not very solid support for this winter blackmouth fishery.

In the 1980's, Puget Sound hatcheries released about 56 million chinook per year. Recent releases are about half of that, with 28 million PS chinook released in 2021. Again, about 3-5% are yearling fish. (And of sub-yearling chinook that migrate north, we've seen the decimating impact of BC and Alaska fisheries.)

Pugent Sound Anglers send out a plea today to support all hatchery production by emailing that thought to NOAA at
hatcheries.public.comment@noaa.gov

Responses are needed by end of business day Monday, March 11.

This impacts our sportfishery, and also benefits the orca situation, so its a win/win.
Just do it.

I sent an email with my support. Thanks for the heads up. If I remember correctly. The P.S. winter Blackmouth production was curtailed because the tribes were demanding 50% of it, and were postured to go to court to get it. WDF and the sportsfishing community were not happy but said OK. Because of that, the Blackmouth production was purposely severely reduced. On top of that, the blackmouth rearing facility near Capital Lake in Olympia was riddled with problems which shut it down, severely reducing South P.S. production. That really hurt South Sound winter success. With all the lawsuits flying around these days, I doubt we will ever achieve the 1980's numbers again. Not sure, but I don't think there are the hatchery facilities to produce such numbers any more. I doubt any new hatchery facilities would be built to support such numbers unless the tribes do it themselves.

The Tribes aren't entitled to 50 % of the black mouth; they are entitled to 50% of the stocks in each management unit. In SS, the State chose to take the fish as black mouth while the Tribes targeted adults. The Tribes did win a lawsuit that required accurate counting of the black mouth and incorporation of them in the sharing.

What's the difference? They got what they didn't have before?

They used to have a whole lot more fish to themselves, too.

Well played!
It's easy to forget that,
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Thanks Kyle for putting together this information. I watched your presentation on You Tube last night and the info is helpful for planning trips.