NOF kick-off and run size forecasts to be presented 6 PM Montesano City Hall. As fp would say, see ya's there.

https://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/northfalcon/

As Strike Zone would say, good luck!

As I say "The plan is a good plan"....100's of hours of meetings, WDFW staff time, commercial and sports groups, and others. The GHMP started in 2014 and is in effect until 2023.

"Stay the course"

WOW... sobering run size forecasts spell a limited season for the Chehalis basin.

The only folks gonna be happy are the ones looking for smoker chums and premium keta caviar. Highlight of the forecast is 58K chums.





Chinook is still squarely in the penalty box.... 5% impact cap on a run-size nearly identical to 2017 = 540 wild kings available on the NON-treaty side. Take a 50 fish slice out for the Chehalis tribe and that leaves the state with less than 500 fish to kill as release morts in targeting other species.

Coho likely to be in the penalty box given last years dismal return and probable escapement failure. In this scenario, the state has less than 1700 wild coho impacts to target hatchery coho and chum. OTOH if we we actually squeaked past the escapement goal in 2017, there are about 2500 wild coho to target or use as impact to access hatch coho and chum.

...

On the Hump side, a king fishery is a pretty safe bet with about a 1000 wild fish available for all fisheries targeting chinook, chum and hatch coho. Count on some mark-select weeks to help stretch the wild impact for a longer king season.

No surprise, Hump wild coho are in the eternal penalty box (what's new?) so up to 235 of these can be burned up to access hatchery coho, chum and chinook.

....

Let the games begin!

The Grays Harbor forecast indicates a difficult year for both nets and poles. While there are a few Chehalis wild coho available I would guess there will be none allowed in the bag. We will need all the wild coho release mortality to go after the hatchery fish. The nets will likely have to cut back on days leaving thousands of chum unharvested.

The only bright spots I see relative to last year are the additional Hump chinook opportunity and maybe enough springers for an opener this year. Grim.

If we are to have our usual Marine Area 2-2 fishery with a 2-fish bag, I can't see it moving forward as mark-select on coho. They're just a HORRIBLE catch and release fish in transition water.

There would be FAR greater savings of wild fish with a simple ONE'n'DONE, and yer off-the-water type of fishery.

We've been here before... and this is what makes the most sense.

Keep the first hatch coho, wild coho, or hatch king and you're tagged out.

After more thought, the 2018 Grays Harbor season looks like it will be the poster child for selective fishing. We pretend that the released fish in the bay have a mortality of 14% for poles and 56% for nets but I think we all know it is greater than that even without considering the impact of seals and sea lions. Releasing a fish anywhere in tidewater probably adds another 50% mortality due to pinniped harvest. Frankly none of the non-tribal harvest in tide water is actually selective under the present conditions.

With equal wild and hatchery coho run sizes and a one-and-done fishery we will have access to 2,747 wild and 2,747 hatchery coho for the entire non-tribal harvest. Most of the 16,318 available non-tribal hatchery coho would go unharvested. In addition most of the harvestable chum will be unavailable for harvest.

If the goal was to achieve the maximum possible harvest of the available coho, the season would be very different than anything we have ever seen. I suggest the non-tribal fishery would look something like this: There would be no harvest by anyone in the bay or in Chehalis tidewater. Tributaries with hatcheries, such as the Satsop, would have a season with hatchery only retention. The release mortality of 10% would allow access to the entire non-tribal share of the available 16,300 hatchery fish. This would be unacceptable to the commercial fishers who would want to take half of the available wild coho (1,373 fish) in the bay along with an equal number of hatchery coho. If the sport fishers were allocated half the wild coho mortality it would still allow a Satsop harvest of 13,730 hatchery fish, nearly all the non-tribal share.

The advisors are a creative group and I sincerely hope that they can craft something better than what I outlined above.

Where would the upper boundary be for Chehalis tidewater?

Well frankly I likely will not jump to that SB. Fact is we have a management policy that directs impacts in good and bad years. So you follow the policy and what it allows. To the bigger point that you harvest the marine to the max then when you come up short nail the local fisher is BS. Once the AK & BC impacts are formalized and off to PFMC we will get a idea what is possible when the marine options go public.

That's a mighty fine question.

A decent argument could be made for ANYWHERE between the bridges at South Monte and Fuller.

If most of the coho are liberally losing scales where they're being caught, that probably ain't a good place to be sortin' for the finless ones.

I'll retract the penalty box comment as I mis-read the slide in the WDFW Powerpoint.... no danger of penalty even if we probably missed the 2017 e-goal (which is highly likely).

So think about how 3 sectors can possibly share those ~2500 coho.... commercial nets, rec, Chehalis Tribal nets.

Our last major pre-season coho shortfall was 2016. We crafted conservative seasons where the bay guys would eventually take <400 and the inriver guys 1800 (total ~2200 rec) in a year that saw the rec fishery close prematurely. State nets took <300. Chehalis Tribe reported <900. Total NON-treaty (NON-QIN) harvest was ~3400 wild coho plus another 400 wild coho taken for hatchery brood.... or roughly 10% NON-treaty impact on the total run size of 35K.

Gonna have to really sharpen our pencils to make 2018 fisheries fit.