WDFW has published "Joint Staff Report Winter Fact Sheet NO. 10 that details the to-date impact and effectiveness of sport and commercial fishing on the Columbia River. Here are some tidbits:

As of 3/22/2004,

1. The spring chinook run is late this year (no surprise there).
2. Commercials have used up 20% of their upriver spring chinook impact, and 10% of their wild winter steelhead impact.
3. Sportees have used up .01% of their upriver spring chinook impact (sport impact on wild steelhead not calculated)
4. Sportees caught 856 and kept 692 spring chinook, and caught 562 and kept 291 steelhead, out of 23,100 angler trips, meaning that on average 16 trips were required to catch 1 fish, and 23 trips were required to take home 1 fish.

I'm trying to work out these numbers, and none of them add up. The commercials have released 1739 (page 3) wild chinook at 40% mortality (page 2) (695 dead wild salmon), and the sportees have released an estimated 164 wild chinook (page 3), at 10% mortality (my own guess) (16 dead wild salmon). If you figure 75% mark rate (page 2) on a total run estimate of 360,700 upriver chinook (page 1), that's about 90,000 wild upriver chinook. The commercials get to kill 0.8% of these, or 720, so why haven't they used up 695/720 = 97% of their allotted impact? Conversely, why haven't the sportees used up 16/720 = 2% of their allotted impact?

Because Region 5 WDFW is ONLY concerened that the commercials have a "viable" commercial fishery regardless of the cost to wild fish. Just my educated opinion here.