I am sure this is a obvious answer, so thank you in advance!
I am trying to understand the impact of the Chinook management plan on non tribal commercial fisheries.
The plan states that more Chinook were harvested last year by non treaty commercial than recreational. It also says that all fishing related mortality is accounted for.
Yet I see reductions mentioned in sport and tribal fisheries in the January 12 presentation down to the 0.1 percent.
What about non tribal commercial? Are they added into ours?
Area 7 gillnet fisheries? Non targeted impacts?

There are two groups. Indian and non-Indian. The Indian includes (should) all Treaty Tribes, commercial (net and troll), subsistence, ceremonial, and recreational. The NI includes WA catch by commercial, recreational, and take-home. For sharing purposes the catch includes salmon produced in the Bolt Case Area, which is Grays Harbor, the Coast, and Puget Sound. I don't know the details of Columbia River sharing.

So, if (by agreed-to stock distributions) a Green River Chinook is taken by in an Area 7A gill net fishery on Fraser Sockeye it counts against the Green River "share". If a Green River Chinook is taken off a charter boat out of Westport its adult equivalent number is counted against Green share.

There are what are referred to as unavoidable impacts. This would mean that fish taken in the Fraser fishery would come off the top as there is no way to avoid them without foregoing the sockeye and pink. This is ameliorated by the time and location of the fishery where few Chinook occur and are further reduced by mesh sizes and release strips.

It is rather obvious that WDFW needs to invest in some serious education.

Table 1. Pre-season predicted exploitation rates on unmarked
Stillaguamish Chinook by fishery in Southern US fisheries using
new FRAM base period from 2013-2017.
Fishery Name Time Step Average 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013
Freshwater Net July-Sept 3.6% 4.3% 2.6% 4.7% 2.5% 3.7%
Tr 3:4 Trl Oct-Apr 1.7% 1.4% 2.9% 1.1% 1.2% 2.0%
Ar 7 Sport July-Sept 1.2% 0.8% 2.5% 0.9% 0.9% 0.9%
Ar 7 Sport Oct-Apr 0.9% 0.4% 0.9% 0.9% 0.4% 1.8%
Tr 3:4 Trl May-June 0.8% 0.5% 0.7% 1.0% 0.8% 0.9%
Tr TulaNet July-Sept 0.6% 0.6% 0.5% 0.5% 0.6% 0.6%
Ar 8-1 Spt Oct-Apr 0.5% 0.4% 0.7% 0.6% 0.6% 0.2%
Ar 9 Sport Oct-Apr 0.4% 0.4% 0.6% 0.3% 0.3% 0.6%
A 11 Sport Oct-Apr 0.4% 0.1% 0.2% 0.1% 0.1% 1.6%
FW Sport July-Sept 0.4% 0.5% 0.1% 0.6% 0.4% 0.2%
Ar 6 Sport Oct-Apr 0.3% 0.2% 0.6% 0.2% 0.3% 0.4%
Tr StSnNet July-Sept 0.3% 0.0% 0.1% 0.7% 0.1% 0.3%
Ar 9 Sport July-Sept 0.3% 0.2% 0.3% 0.2% 0.2% 0.3%
Ar 5 Sport Oct-Apr 0.2% 0.2% 0.1% 0.3% 0.2% 0.4%
Ar 5 Sport July-Sept 0.2% 0.3% 0.3% 0.2% 0.2% 0.1%
Ar 3:4 Spt July-Sept 0.2% 0.2% 0.2% 0.2% 0.1% 0.2%
So the non tribal commercial impacts are under "sport" in this chart?

Stillaguamish exploitation limits
• 2017 at Pre-Season Abundance and New Management
Objectives:
• Original Terminal Run Size: > 1100 (Total) 8% UM SUS ER
Cap, 12.4% M SUS ER Cap
• Original ERs: 21.7% (UM Total), 11.5% (UM SUS), 23.3% (M
SUS)
• Remove FW Sport Incidentals, Reduce FW Net from 35 to
22, Reduce Winter Treaty Troll from 4500 to 2000, Close
summer sport A7, Close winter sport A7, A8, A9, Reduce A9
summer sport quota from 5558 to 1000
• New ERs: 17.7% (UM Total), 7.1% (UM SUS); 12.4% (M SUS)

Are they also under "sport" here? Or do they not have any impact? Area 7 would be closed year round to sport but open to commercial? What happens to there fisheries? Thanks

Based on that there was no expectation for any NI Commercial fishery that would intercept a Stilly Chinook.

According to the “2017 Puget Sound commercial Salmon regulations”
https://wdfw.wa.gov/publications/01920/wdfw01920.pdf
They list Chinook Gillnet and Purse seine fisheries in area 7b (table 5) starting August 13 7” mesh.
They also have harvested over 60k chum just out of area 7 the last 3 years. (Table 3) Also many other fisheries in areas 8 and 9 etc.

Where are these impacts in the Puget Sound Chinook Management Plan?
No impact?
What happens to these fisheries going forward?

7B is Bellingham Bay is a a fishery directed at Nooksack/Samish Chinook. Interceptions of NS fish would be of concern. 7" minimum mesh would pass any encountered immatures.

The Chum fishery occurs after the adult Chinook have passed. Chinook taken are (were) estimated as 10% (7) and 5% (7A) of WA origin with each stock present in its whole-sound strength. Chum fisheries are conducted with 6 or 6.5" minimum which again passes Chinook.

There is pretty good daily catch data from the 60s on, by gear, by day for those fisheries and they include the number caught and average weight.

Not to say interceptions of black mouth don't happen, but generally at negligible levels. Since they are known and have a long track record they have surely been looked at.

“They start at 7” then switch to 5” after two weeks to make sure they get them all. If I would of said 5” first I’m sure you would of said it’s to let the adults pass by. That’s how the gillnet mesh game is played around here. There listed at 100% mortality and rightfully so but I always here about what they don’t hypothetically kill.

So the 8% rate, accounted for to the 0.1 %, is split 50.0-50.0% sport tribal. Since a 0.1 is likely 1 fish, that would mean that commercial fisheries statewide do not even catch 1 Stillaguamish Chinook.

What a nice clean fishery! Way to go commies!

Aren't they referring to the Canadian fishery on the inside passage?

The switch to 5" minimum would be to target coho and it would take Chinook that wandered by. Just how good is the black mouth fishing inside Belligham Bay or outer Samish Bay (7C) in August and September?

Without actually seeing the data and the actual days fished it is hard to say if the NI nets take any Stilly Chinook. I suspect that none of the terminal fisheries encounter them except if a fishery is scheduled in 8A before late September. The Fraser sockeye and pink targeted fisheries have more of an opportunity but confining them to 7 and 7A greatly reduces the possibility.

Although I will often rail against the reliance on models without actually looking out the window to see if it is raining, there is no way that any fishery, sport or commercial, could occur in WA without models because of the Sharing and ESA issues. As such, assumptions (that are and have to be data based, supportable, and documented) must be made. As a colleague says "Alls models are wrong but some are useful". A good, logical biologist can poke holes in any model. But the alternatives have just as many holes.

What folks should look at in dealing with the whole PS Chinook (or any ESA species) is how is it doing? Is it recovering? If not, then what you are currently doing is not working and you must get more restrictive over the whole suite of issues, whether harvest or habitat. If improvement is not being made, management is failing.

There are many commercial fisheries, and I’m sure the impacts are listed somewhere as you say. I don’t know why they were not listed in the January 12 presentation. All the information has been almost all sport vs tribal. If this plan goes into place It would be 90% sport affected. The other 10% tribes and it appears no changes to commercial fisheries. Follow the money.

Most of the Chinook commercial harvest in WA is tribal. Since at least the 70s, and probably before that, the rec side was given primary access to Chinook in WA. This was even somewhat codified in Initiative 77 that kept nets out of the non-Fraser parts of PS until September.

Boldt allowed the Tribal fisheries inside but WDF still emphasized that recs got first crack at Chinook (outside of the Fraser incidentals). These fisheries were primarily ocean, Straits, and black mouth which meant, post-Boldt, that the Tribes were often the only one's who could fish adult Chinook. As Smalma has often noted, shifting the harvest inside requires more nets (or higher escapement goals) as there would be too little time to hook and line the adults.

By the 1980s, coho had been added to the rec priority. They were abundant enough that there was sufficient surplus for the nets but, overall, the recs got first crack at Chinook and coho while the nets got first crack at sockeye, pink, and chum (Lake WA sockeye being an exception).