A new article @ Tidal Exchange this morning: https://tidalexchange.com/2017/03/30/ps-recreational-chinook-fresh-priorities-needed/



In 2003 era of mark selective recreational fisheries began in Puget Sound. That year in Marine Area 5 and the Western portion of Marine Area 6 anglers were required to release any endangered Chinook they encountered, and in return gave anglers increased opportunity to catch more abundant salmon stocks like Coho, Pinks, and ‘marked’ hatchery Chinook. Over time, mark selective Chinook fisheries became commonplace across most Puget Sound marine areas.

However, with now a dozen years of accumulated experience, we believe it is time to review the current suite of Puget Sound recreational Chinook fisheries. Simply stated, we believe three simple goals should drive the construction of the Puget Sound seasons:

First and foremost, the seasons must fit within their conservation constraints and established policies. This includes ESA/conservation concerns, as well as WDFW commission policies and the framework of co-management.
Second, to our way of thinking, the best season designs maximize the number of actual angler days created. Extending a single popular fishery by one day could be more valuable than a week of openings in a less accessible area. As such, we don’t consider “opportunity” to be simply the total number of open days this year compared to last. We believe the correct metric is the number of open days times the number of anglers likely to participate. With all the talk about expanding opportunity — this is the criteria we would advocate using in those comparisons.
Third, the seasons design should try to maximally utilize the non-Tribal share of ESA impact and/or harvestable abundance.

The list above may seem like truisms, and hard to disagree with — but we think if followed they would have some significant impacts in the design of the season structure… Let’s dig into some of those..
Summer Beats Winter

We believe Summer Chinook seasons should be the centerpiece of a fresh approach to season setting. To the surprise of no-one, Summer open days attract significantly higher angler participation than do winter open days. Additionally–and perhaps more surprisingly–Summer days also produce higher catch of hatchery Chinook for less impact on endangered Chinook than do winter days. Given that our most popular recreational fisheries are often constrained by these ESA impacts/encounters, we think it’s essential to maximize fisheries in this most advantageous Summer window.

As a result, we strongly advocate a season design which places a significant premium on these prime time Summer Chinook fisheries. Specifically, we believe the right first step is budgeting for impacts that would establish a 2-month Summer Chinook season for most Puget Sound marine areas. In some areas where limiting stock impacts preclude this (MAs 8-1, 8-2, and 12) we would still advocate placing clear priority for Summer seasons. This is by far the clearest path to the trifecta: 1) broad angler participation, 2) successfully catching the state share of harvestable fish, and 3) meeting our conservation objectives.

Once Summer Chinook pass through mixed stock marine areas, we believe season designs should further maximize angler access to harvestable fish using remaining allowable impacts. Again, using angler/days as the criteria, we’d first open the most popular terminal and freshwater fisheries. This simple angler/days criteria should allow seasons to be designed which cover a broad array of popular marine and freshwater Summer fisheries.

While some may argue (correctly) that this would reduce the total number of days marine areas will be open for Chinook fishing, we think based on the angler-days metric, Summer fisheries are a big winner. To us, the highest and best use of the public resource is when it’s shared by the largest number of Washington state residents and Summer fisheries accomplish this. In addition, we expect concentrating impacts in Summer fisheries will generate greater economic activity for local marine and tackle industries while simultaneously growing license revenues needed to support hatchery production and enforcement.
Modernizing Season Designs

The Summer and Winter Puget Sound fisheries present complex, distinctly different management challenges. On the one hand, Summer seasons are dominated by adult fish with shaker/sub-legal encounters only a moderate portion of the fishery. On the other hand, Winter fisheries encounter large numbers of sub-legal Chinook and incur larger hook/release mortalities as a result. Additionally while the adult returning fish of Summer move in a relatively predictable pattern as they return to their home rivers, the Winter sub-adult/juvenile fish are less predictable, moving seasonally based on forage availability. As a result, the two management paradigms used in recent years have reflected these differences: summer catch quotas and winter encounter limits. Let’s briefly talk about possibilities for each:
Summer Fisheries

Summer inner Puget Sound Summer fisheries are managed by adhering to fixed catch quotas. These quotas are a perfect solution if, and only if, the pre-season forecast upon which the quota is based is itself perfect. Unfortunately, fish returns are exceedingly difficult to forecast. Even with best efforts they are a well educated guess. If the forecast is too high, quotas fail as fishing to the quota jeopardizes conservation goals. If the forecast is too low, once again quotas fail as fisheries are closed earlier than necessary. We believe a new path is one which capitalizes on the experience and exhaustive data gathering conducted over these mark selective fisheries for the last decade.

We call on the co-managers to migrate towards duration driven seasons, instead of catch quotas. Once quotas are established during season-setting, they should be converted to a predicted duration (days) based on the high quality surveys acquired over the last decade. These duration-based-seasons have a distinct advantage over quotas — they more readily scale with the actual number of fish passing through the area. Duration driven seasons are superior at preventing over-harvest if the forecast is too high, and avoid cutting seasons short in the event of a larger-than-forecast return. Duration driven seasons do not mean seasons will be the same length each year–they simply means using the forecast to set a season duration is much safer (especially for fish!) than setting a catch quota. And there are still more benefits! Known length seasons are clearly better economically vs. fixed catch quotas: Fisheries managers can spend money on enforcement instead of exhaustive catch monitoring, guides can book clients with confidence, tourists can book trips to our region to fish with much less concern about closures.

We recognize that in our mixed-stock fisheries, with uncertainty about shaker abundance (yes, even in Summer) it may not be feasible to come out of North of Falcon with guaranteed durations and still maximize the use of our limited allowable impacts. Thus, our specific proposal is to establish fixed season duration that provides a safety margin–with a structured and planned in-season update procedure that releases the margin if there are no surprises.

Some may feel a duration driven seasons are out of reach for inner Puget Sound. We’d point them to Marine Area 5–where co-managers are still able to agree on duration driven Summer seasons in a fishery with more complexities and more variable annual stock contributions than do our inner Puget Sound fisheries. They do in-season monitoring, and in recent years they’ve been successful at meeting their pre-seasons durations completely. We should follow their example.
Winter Fisheries

We’re fans of Winter Sound fisheries wherever allowable impacts remain once solid Summer fisheries are established. The nature of these Winter fisheries — particularly the unpredictable sub-legal populations discussed above — means encounter limits seem like they will remain the core management tool. In terms of timing — we think WDFW did a commendable job this year. Mid-season they chose to close areas and conserve impacts during some of the least favorable months — preserving those impacts for later re-openings. This improves both the weather and safety for anglers, but also allows some of the sub-legal fish to grow enough to become legal keepers.

We believe this sequence — preserving winter impacts for use later in the winter season — again meets our top three goals. It is likely to increase participation, it increases catch/impact ratios, and keeps our fisheries within conservation guidelines.
C0-Managing Missed Forecasts

It would be foolish to assume that all forecasts are purely the result of science/unaffected by politics. As a result, we believe the process of reconciling co-manager forecasts, as well as planning for in-season updates of these forecasts are worthwhile places to look for improvements in season-setting.
Reconciling Forecasts

In the early part of North of Falcon, the co-managers trade forecasts for each basin, and then reconcile these into a co-managed forecast. The problem with this is that there’s no clear accountability for either party and as a result, forecasts can be more vulnerable to tactical/political manipulation. It’s very easy to understand how a user group which fishes in the terminal area might have real incentive to low-ball a forecast, knowing an in-season update can restore their access to a full run. But upstream/marine fishers (both Tribal and Non-Tribal) can’t recover lost opportunity at that point, as the fish will have largely moved past. The reverse is also true: an upstream user group might desire higher forecasts because they know that any in-season closures will dis-proportionally impact terminal fisheries.

If the forecasting process becomes politicized or tactical, it undermines the season-setting process, and we think that’s a huge problem. As a result, we propose that the co-managers implement a feedback loop into this process to encourage best forecasting efforts be rewarded. We propose the reconciliation process transition into one which is weighted based on each co-managers accuracy on that same run forecast over the previous 3-5 years. A system like this would strongly encourage best-efforts at making accurate forecasts as well as monitoring run-sizes. Both of these seem essential in our current fisheries climate.
In-Season Update Planning

Clearly 2016 taught a lot of lessons, and the lack of anticipation for a larger than expected Coho run proved problematic for the State to adapt to in most areas. We won’t belabor this point beyond saying we’re encouraged that the department seems prepared to ensure the List of Agreed Fisheries covers more bases in 2017 than it did last year.
Perfect Time to Change

2017 is the first year the co-managers will be using a new/updated mathematical model (a.k.a. FRAM) for in-State fisheries. We expect that under the updated model there will be shifts in which stocks may be limiting factors on sport fisheries. In turn this will drive the reshaping of most Puget Sound Chinook fisheries. The arrival of this new model, coupled with a decade of intensive fisheries monitoring, provides the best chance ever to make informed decisions about structuring seasons to meet the complex and sometimes conflicting goals of season setting. Rather than just repeating what we’ve done in the past, we urge WDFW and the co-managers to take a fresh look at the first principles and to design seasons which capitalize on the considerable learnings of the last 13 years of mark selective fishing.

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Your thoughts on these proposals?

Also, I have to give credit where it is due, & want to point out that this is Smalma's work done in collaboration with our editors @ Tidal, Primarily IrishRouge.

Great perspective's here Curt!

Looks like someone is THINKING! Now if we can get the right people to LISTEN!

Thank you guys for working for our fish and fisheries.

This is a great starting place. That maximum/optimum economic benefit is a good starting place.

Want to throw out a kicker, though. Came up in discussions about coho restoration in the Yakima. I voiced concerns that as juvenile coho increase the sympatric trout will decrease. This could, ultimately, reduce the trout fishery. Speaking as a theoretical Yakima watershed resident and trout angler I noted that coho restoration would both diminish my fishery but still require me to protect my land for coho. The response was that that I could go to Buoy Zooey and fish for those coho.

The production of our natural resources will require that some lands and waterways be protected from maximum local economic development and use. WDFW at least once, on an HPA, required that the stream be fenced off and nobody allowed inside the fence (even the owner). The local who has to bear some of the cost of production needs to have local access to the result. Meaning that, for salmon, that there needs to freshwater fisheries that many not be as economically "rich" as payment for the protection.

A 2 month season for MOST areas!!!!!! And I bet you know the 2 areas that will be short changed with an idea like this. I have little doubt there will be a lot of push back from every PSA chapter south of Seattle. I know my chapter isn't going to buy into this.

The fish "pie" is no longer large enough for everybody to get what they want and still have fish left over for escapement. We are into an "either-or" situation where there will be winners and losers; there are no win-wins.

As long as AK and BC keep calm and carry on we will have many stocks that are overfished before we see them. Go to AK/BC and cork WA.

If we take the available harvestable and impacts in the mixed-stock fisheries (ocean and northern PS) we eliminate some inside/terminal fisheries.

If we maximize the terminal area fisheries, which probably have the best chance to meet conservation goals, we reduce/eliminate the approach fisheries.

The proposal offered a way to get the most people on the water catching the most fish. Comes at a cost and I think that "they" (the big evil they that controls us) prefer recs to fight amongst themselves rather than settle on a solution the benefits some at the expense of others.

BW -
I understand your concerns; it was not unexpected. The same concerns were expressed when the mark selective Summer Chinook fisheries in central sound were added in 2007.

Without a doubt expanded fishing in front of a given area typically result in fewer fish for the one fishing behind that increased effort and that has to be a legitimate concern.

A common concern one constantly hears in recreational salmon discussions is that non-treaty catches continually a below their "full share". The proposal presented above (and it is only a proposal) was to examine our current season structures to see if there potential changes that access in recreational more of the available fish. While doing so it was thought to be important to stay within current WDFW commission polices; provide diverse opportunities across users and geographical areas, continue giving the recreational fisheries for Chinook and coho as the highest priority, etc.

One of the observations that give an indication that re-structuring the seasons might provide benefits was the experience following the 2007 start of the central sound mark selective fisheries. I looked at the Puget Sound summer (July-September) Chinook (MA 5-13) comparing the catches in 2004 through 2006 (3 years before the change) with 2007 through 2009. That comparison showed that your concerns are indeed valid; there was approximately a 10% reduction in Chinook harvested during the summer in MA 11 and 13 (based on WDFW's sport catch reports). At the same time there was an overall increase of about 30% in the total number of recreational harvested Chinook in Puget Sound during that summer period. Obviously the catches would also be a reflection of the over all Chinook abundance. In that 6 year period the 2007 forecasts was the largest and the 2009 forecast was the lowest (it is important to note even during the 2009 poor year the catches matched the best during the 2004 to 2006 period.

It is hoped that there can be an examination of a potential re-structuring of our season that could involves all diverse interest. It may well be that increased over-all summer seasons are not doable or that trades involved may not be worth it. However what I do know is that if we don't look we will not know!

If we want increase non-treaty harvest we have to go down a path similar to this idea or look at some sort major paradigm shift in how significant portion of the non-treaty share is catch, ie increased use of gill nets in terminal areas.

I for one welcome your thoughts and input and hope that if some sort of discussion occurs within the angling community that you can be part the discussion.

Curt

Good article and a lot of work and thought went into it.

Considering that my center piece of fishing is already the summer Chinook fishery in A9,A10, I’m all in, considering the pathetic and inconsistence state that fishery is right now.

Considering the Everett boat ramp is the gem around the sound with the closest summer fishery in A9,A10 or the inconsistent Tulalip bubble fishery, it would be great to be able to catch a Snohomish Coho in 8-2 instead of catching a Snohomish Coho in BC, ocean, and straits inward.

Ditto 8-2 again, for odd year humpy fishing in humpy hollow.

8-2 humpy hollow and the strait this year are in the same boat with certain low abundance pinks mixed with others, let’s see who fishes.

IMO, the closer that we can get fishing back to areas around the population centers in Puget Sound in summer fisheries the better, because summer fishing around my neck of the woods as it stands now is getting closer to nonexistant compared to when I fished growing up.

"Once Summer Chinook pass through mixed stock marine areas, we believe season designs should further maximize angler access to harvestable fish using remaining allowable impacts. Again, using angler/days as the criteria, we’d first open the most popular terminal and freshwater fisheries. This simple angler/days criteria should allow seasons to be designed which cover a broad array of popular marine and freshwater Summer fisheries."

Thanks for posting this.

Would the above, while extending the season possibly take away opportunity from traditional summer chinook fishing areas?
While everyone likes more opportunity, I think the experience counts as well.
If fishing from a boat, I'd much rather be fishing PNP, Mid Channel etc then be confined to say inner Elliott Bay with a bunch of other boats. Seattle has I nice skyline, bit I'd rather be looking at Whidbey or Kitsap and Jefferson Co shoreline while fishing.
In other words, I'd imagine there would still be a quota. If that quota filled (catch / encounters) in the terminal areas, could that possibly eliminate opportunity in mix stock marine areas?

The winter season is still popular with many folks. While I understand the summer chinook fishing is more popular, winter fishing opportunities shouldn't be penalized because of fair weather anglers.
SF

Something to keep in mind, especially with Chinook, is the use of "adult equivalents". This is out of Boldt. Since the fish have to shared, ia calculation is made as to the probability of a fish surviving to adulthood/entering the stream to spawn.

So, simplistically, an adult Chinook gill netted or hook and lined from the river or bay is 1 fish. That same fish, taken as a barely legal blackmouth, may be 0.5 fish, for allocation purposes.

The proposal to take the fish as immatures in "outside" waters actually lets anglers put more dead fish in the boat.

Way back, in the 40's, WDG used to have spring trout openings on rivers. Anglers targeted, with WDG approval, steelhead smolts and presmolts. They did this because they (WDG) believed that there were license-buying anglers who preferred a trout on sunny spring day to a steelhead in the freezing rain. Regardless, for every (say) 5-10 trout taken one less adult steelhead entered the river.

Same with the Chinook. If we choose to take them as immatures, and this will allow for more days on the water and more actual dead fish, then the rivers will see less adults. Hopefully enough to meet escapement goals but that's another discussion.

The angling community, in total, needs to look at the time/area options and see what they choose. But, whatever is chosen will piss off somebody.

That may well be, but if your plan is to open a season for everyone north of Seattle and let everyone else go pound sand so you can have your fun, well good luck with that. You were doing so well until that last line. Now as a member of the board of directors of the South Sound Chapter of PSA I expect I will have to bring this up at the next board meeting just as a heads up.

What do you think we will say?

I for one would like to see a Winter Blackmouth population in South PS like it used to be back in the 80's. Currently the only productive Blackmouth grounds are North of Seattle to the San Juans out to the Straight. I understand the rearing facility was lost at Capital lake. How about finding another? I'm sure volunteers would jump to help at any net pen facility to bolster numbers. It seems that Vashon South was abandonded? What would it take to return to the glory days?

Anything with hatchery Chinook will tied up with the listed wild fish. As long as they are showing a lack of recovery I doubt new hatchery production would be allowed unless it can shown that it will have no impact on the wilds.

Puget Sound Recreational Fishing Enhancement Fund Oversight Committee: http://wdfw.wa.gov/about/advisory/psrfef/.

That group does a pretty good job of documenting its actions and posting up their meeting minutes. I do wish they would create a periodic report on projects undertaken and results.

Art Tachell has been pushing hard to improve South Sound blackmouth as well as other fishing opportunities.

Thanks for the information.

Pretty much what the Gig Harbor chapter will probably say. Nuts!!

There is still a cadre of small boat guys who fish winter blackmouth as weather permits although loss of launch sites in Pierce County is making it more difficult.

If South Sound was to have a season two months long (or less) targeting mature summer Chinook you would see even less in the way of facilities meaning less access meaning less participation meaning fewer licenses sold.

But you might well see more casual fishers jamming the only all tide public ramp on Pierce County's east side - which is already a cluster on summer week-ends.

Trailer from South Sound to Everett? Yes, sure - might as well just put a bullet in your head and save the gas money.

No, what we need is a more vibrant blackmouth fishery achieved through better rearing/release programs and (gasp) predator control.

The cost of a bigger and better black mouth program will likely be the wilds, especially springers.

It will time to make a choice...................

There are some very interesting parts to the proposal. It's very well thought through and a useful contribution. However, two consequences of widely implemented selective fisheries were left out. The first is that with selective fisheries in place, conservation of hatchery stocks now becomes a concern. In other words, it is possible to overharvest hatchery runs below their escapement goals even when strong conservation measures for wild stocks are in place and working. The second is that, at least a few places where I have looked, widely implemented selective fisheries have already resulted in harvest sharing favoring the non-treaty side, i.e. non-treaty harvesting more than treaty from a given allocation unit in a given year. It's my sense that both the state and tribal managers have so far been ignoring the evidence of both of these phenomena that is available through careful analysis of the runs from the revised FRAM model. I believe this is because managers' focus is still on wild stocks even though the focus of fisheries has been on hatchery stocks for a long time.

Twodogs -

Thanks for the comments and refreshing view. The idea behind the proposal was to generate discussions to explore that collectively the States fishers are taking full advantage of abundant hatchery stocks while staying within conservation and legal constrains. Responsive management whether with rod and reel or gill nets requires that the full suite of fisheries take in account all the resource needs; including hatchery escapements.

In 2016 in Puget Sound hatcheries there were surpluses of more than 50,000 hatchery fall Chinook. Interestingly the only hatchery in 2016 had brood stock issues was the Samish where the vast majority of the fish were taken in terminal gill nets (both non-treaty and treaty). Just one example where the co-managers have a collectively duty to craft fishing paradigms to address full range of resource needs regardless of fishing methods.

I agree that there are several examples of where the non-treaty fishing fleet (mostly hook and line) have taken more than 1/2 of the allowable ESA impacts and/or harvestable numbers. Off the top of my head a couple examples would be the Stillaguamish and Mid-Hood Canal stocks. In both of those cases there has been limited tribal fisheries and even though the non-treaty fishers "over fished" that action did not constrain the local tribal fisheries. Are you suggesting that all parties only fish up to 1/2 of ESA impacts or harvestable numbers and then end all fishing. Suspect the recreational fishers would buy into that paradigm but not so sure that some of the tribal fishers would be particularly happy limiting their catches to only 1/2 of the available fish. The last I looked the harvest ledger while favoring the non-treaty fisheries in a few cases is generally slanted towards the treaty side.

The real question is along the various co-manager parties craft fisheries that can mean their needs and not infringe on other parties from exercising their fisheries, meeting conservation and hatchery escapements does any party have the right to dictate how the others fish. I think not.



Curt

One would think the mid canal non tribal ESA impact would increase given the tribal action of late by the Skok tribe on the river.
The state needs to provide opportunity for non tribal anglers to those fish raised and paid for by the state, especially with this years chinook forecast of 48K hatchery.
No opportunity in the river, so in the salt it is.
SF