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#997319 - 11/21/18 07:26 PM BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings!
eyeFISH Offline
Ornamental Rice Bowl

Registered: 11/24/03
Posts: 12766
Well it sure ain't on the WA coast!

These guys should consider themselves VERY lucky.


...


Perusing the most recent PSC chinook technical committee reports today.

https://www.psc.org/publications/technical-reports/technical-committee-reports/chinook/

For reference, the CTC uses Queets fall chinook as the main indicator stock for the WA coast. Here's how the PSC exploitation and escapement analysis shakes out for coastal kings during the most recent 8 seasons with a full run reconstruction.... harvest years 2009-2016.

56.4% of total pre-harvest adult production is exploited in fisheries throughout AK BC and the WA coasts.

That pile of dead fish splits out like so...
AK = 48%
BC = 24%
WA = 28%
.... bottom line 72% of the harvest has taken place before a single WA coastal king has a chance to swim south past Cape Flattery.

Singling out the WA harvest alone.... (27/28) 96% are taken by tribal nets.... and only (1/28) 4% by hook and line, virtually all caught by marine trollers. The miniscule in-river rec fishery isn't even big enough to register on the CTC table as 0.1% of the total exploitation. The marine troll harvest is split 2:1 commercial over sport. In other words, commercial interests take 98.7% while sport trollers take only 1.3% of the WA coastal kings actually caught here at home.

...

Looking at the comm:rec split from top to bottom AK to BC to WA:

Rec trollers take (10.2/56.4) 18% of the total harvest. Local WA coast sport trollers take a measly (0.2/10.2) 2% of all the rec-caught kings originating from the WA coast. 98% of the sport-caught WA coastal kings have already vanished into some black hole in AK/BC before the first rod-down out of Neah, La Push, or Westport.

Commercials take (46.2/56.4) 81.9% of the total harvest. Out of that pile of dead WA coastal kings
AK takes 51%
BC takes 16%
WA takes 33%
.... bottom line 2 out of every 3 commercially-caught WA coastal kings have already disappeared in northern-intercept commercial fisheries before they get anywhere close to home waters.

J F C, now we know what the SRKW's must feel like. Sux balz to be at the end of the buffet line. Thanks for the opportunity, AK and BC.... thanks.
_________________________
"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey)

"If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman)


The Keen Eye MD
Long Live the Kings!

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#997322 - 11/21/18 10:15 PM Re: BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings! [Re: eyeFISH]
Tug 3 Offline
Returning Adult

Registered: 03/06/14
Posts: 260
Loc: Tumwater
Thanks for decoding the numbers, Doc. The Queets has been sacred to me for fifty years. I don't mind releasing a king to keep it alive, but these numbers are chilling and depressing. It makes my neck get redder and redder. Most of us know the numbers on the Sound and the Columbia, but I've never dug deep enough to look at the coastal numbers. Please keep up your advocacy.

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#997325 - 11/21/18 11:11 PM Re: BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings! [Re: eyeFISH]
eyeFISH Offline
Ornamental Rice Bowl

Registered: 11/24/03
Posts: 12766
Historically ALL salmon harvest was terminal. Native Americans (and Canada First Nations) caught all their fish in the river. Fish returned to those rivers in proportion to how well they were cared for.... it was all ties to a respect for the resource. Trash the river and/or overharvest the fish, and the offenders would suffer the consequences.

Along comes the white man, and the new world view that the fish are just free-swimming wealth waiting to be taken, a dollar bill with fins, reduced to a convenient commodity that could be stuffed in a can and traded globally.

In the race to take MORE MORE MORE, industrial scale harvest methods were employed. And along with it, a mentality to "low hole" the competition. The fleet simply laid claim to fishing grounds further and downstream.

First it was the lower mainstems of the major salmon-producing arteries. Then the estuaries. Then the nearshore coastal marine waters. Then the open ocean, as far as fleets were willing to travel to "one up" the other guy.

And now we've got the mess we have today.... salmon being exploited at every stage of their sub-adult to adult life history, throughout their entire range. The harvest machine is burning the salmon's candle at both ends with no relief in sight.

And with dire consequences, esp for older age-classes of chinook. A new set of very un-natural selection pressures have been created in the killing fields. The year-round mixed stock fishery selects AGAINST larger, older age classes foraging in the ocean pasture. Any fish genetically programmed to stay 3, 4, 5, or even 6 years in the salt clearly has the odds stacked WAY against them. WAY! The older the fish, the longer the odds it can survive out there long enough to reach sexual maturity. The fishery essentially creates a genetic dead end for those fish programmed to return later in life.
_________________________
"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey)

"If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman)


The Keen Eye MD
Long Live the Kings!

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#997326 - 11/21/18 11:30 PM Re: BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings! [Re: eyeFISH]
eyeFISH Offline
Ornamental Rice Bowl

Registered: 11/24/03
Posts: 12766
And yet in my own home basin, we continue to fail meeting a paltry fall chinook escapement goal. Managers missed the spawner goal 6 out of the most recent 8 returns on record. Ensuring the creature's ability to sustainably and abundantly procreate should be the priority.

Structuring a fishery that makes that happen consistently would be nice. Building in incentives for conservation and stewardship would be even nicer. At present, the Grays Harbor Policy lays out the harvest restraint necessary at the local level to help achieve spawner goals more consistently. We can't even begin to think about targeting them unless e-goals have been met at least 3 of the previous 5 returns. The problem is that pre-terminal exploitation has already taken 40% of the year's adult production before a single king swims over the bar at Westport.

Terminal harvest is simply a much better fit given the life history of the critter we want to conserve.
__________________

Management would be much easier and effective if salmon fisheries were prosecuted strictly in terminal areas in/near the basin of origin. This paradigm would also confer the greatest accountability for local stakeholders and policy-makers to determine whether or not their local fish stocks prosper or perish. Local stakeholders reap EXACTLY what they sow.

It would effectively create a unified point source of collective local harvest, eliminating the guesswork in how many fish disappear into some unaccountable black hole in distant often unknown fisheries.

Eliminating distant open ocean harvest would be a boon to the recovery of older age classes of salmon that have been wiped out in most of the major salmon-producing arteries of the PNW. Larger older fish simply don't stand a chance in the present day harvest milieu. Our artificially induced selection pressures weigh heavily against a life strategy with prolonged oceanic foraging. 4-, 5- and 6-salt life histories of the past are EXTREMELY difficult to genetically perpetuate because the odds are too great that a fish spending that amount of time in the killing fields would simply NEVER survive to spawn to pass on that genetic trait. It's no surprise that these fish are such a modern-day RARITY!

I believe this is a key element to securing sustainable salmon populations that managers conveniently ignore or simply refuse to touch. There is just too much geo-socio-political "status quo" inertia to overcome. How do you dismantle a fully capitalized macro-economy fueled by the open ocean harvest of free-swimming wealth?

__________

And for the record I'm not accusing anyone of personal actions that are illegal or unsporting or inherently bad. Folks are either fishing to put food on their table or to earn an honest living, exploiting the resource entirely within the law. The problem is having all that exploitation occurring in a framework with no accountability to getting fish back to their rivers of origin where they can procreate. In the end, it's not about managing fish, it's about managing people.... specifically the people killing the fish. The ultimate management goal is to put sufficient constraints on the killing to make sure there is adequate escapement to the basin of origin.

When the killing is going on across points far and wide with zero ability for local managers to control where, when, and who is killing their fish, it makes their job of putting enough fish on the gravel virtually impossible. Terminal harvest (salt and fresh) in fishing zones within or immediately adjacent to the basin of origin greatly simplifies the accounting for the harvest of fish destined for that basin.

Get real, folks.

If you found out the Russians, Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese, Taiwanese or whatever-eze were snarfing up 40, 50, or 60% of the take (either thru target fisheries or as by-catch) before the fish ever reached home waters, you'd ALL be screaming bloody murder.

What we have now is a giant chaotic free-for-all with no way to know how the chips are going to fall until it's too late. Bottom line, we need to re-structure and embrace a new harvest paradigm to be better stewards of the resource.

The sooner the better.
_________________________
"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey)

"If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman)


The Keen Eye MD
Long Live the Kings!

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#997328 - 11/22/18 06:53 AM Re: BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings! [Re: eyeFISH]
cohobankie Offline
Juvenile at Sea

Registered: 09/07/09
Posts: 194
Great write up Doc. Don't forget the dredger bycatch. What does that do to the springers or big fish?

Just take a look at the Austral Kings, their size, and their returns and maybe we would have the answers. I don't believe they are targeted in the ocean but I could be wrong. You know a hell of a lot more.

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#997329 - 11/22/18 07:13 AM Re: BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings! [Re: eyeFISH]
Carcassman Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 11/21/07
Posts: 7411
Loc: Olema,California,Planet Earth
There was an interesting article by the WDF Director (or whatever the agency was back then) before 1920 about the developing fishery for immature salmon at the mouth of the Columbia and into the ocean. He was opposed to it for a variety of reasons. One interesting reason was that the fish were less fit to eat. They ran physical/chemical analysis of the ocean caught fish versus in-river adults-including fish at a hatchery. The conclusion they reached was that the adults were higher quality; less water, more fat, and a few other constituents. One thing they weren't was bright silver.

I fully agree with Doc that fisheries should be terminal. They are mature, bigger, of rather well known stock. They are cheaper (ecologically) to catch. I would love to see in (blind) analysis of total nutritional quality.

Way back when I was in college Doc Donaldson liked to tell about a taste test run with his trout. All fed exactly the same food except for colorings added. The North American tasters were convinced that the red trout tasted better; the Northern Europeans believed it was the white. Their eyes over-ruled their taste buds.

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#997334 - 11/22/18 08:59 AM Re: BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings! [Re: eyeFISH]
RUNnGUN Offline
Repeat Spawner

Registered: 12/06/07
Posts: 1382
Thanks for sharing. Wonder if any of those statistics were presented during the Orca Task Force meetings? Sure didn't read anything related in the final report/recommendations. The political and public will to stop the interception could be achieved in this current climate. Or, is it kept a secret to keep the status quo?
_________________________
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller.
Don't let the old man in!

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#997339 - 11/22/18 10:56 AM Re: BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings! [Re: eyeFISH]
Salmo g. Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 03/08/99
Posts: 13520
Assume for the moment that the Queets Chinook data is roughly representative of other WA coastal stocks, that the sport fishery takes only 1.3% of the total harvest. So 'splain to me again why WA taxpayers and fishing license buyers should be funding the massive WA salmon hatchery program so that Chinook can be caught and harvested in AK, BC, and here in WA by commercial fishermen. I think there's gotta' be more cost effective ways to invest that money to benefit citizens of WA.

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#997340 - 11/22/18 11:54 AM Re: BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings! [Re: eyeFISH]
Carcassman Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 11/21/07
Posts: 7411
Loc: Olema,California,Planet Earth
Gotta plant those fish so that something comes back for the Tribes. Gotta put those hatchery fish out there to provide "cover" for the wild fish.

As PT Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute". Buy those licenses............

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#997341 - 11/22/18 12:48 PM Re: BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings! [Re: eyeFISH]
slabhunter Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 01/17/04
Posts: 3742
Loc: Sheltona Beach
BC 'cause they ate forage fish on the way down the coast...

Harvest (at any cost) management needs a wake up call...
_________________________
When we are forgotten, we cease to exist .
Share your outdoor skills.

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#997345 - 11/22/18 01:34 PM NO BULL.... [Re: eyeFISH]
eyeFISH Offline
Ornamental Rice Bowl

Registered: 11/24/03
Posts: 12766
Originally Posted By: eyeFISH

...


Perusing the most recent PSC chinook technical committee reports today.

https://www.psc.org/publications/technical-reports/technical-committee-reports/chinook/

For reference, the CTC uses Queets fall chinook as the main indicator stock for the WA coast. Here's how the PSC exploitation and escapement analysis shakes out for coastal kings during the most recent 8 seasons with a full run reconstruction.... harvest years 2009-2016.




For those who wish to personally verify my assertions, the latest Queets analysis of exploitation (along with every other PSC indicator stock) lives here....

https://www.psc.org/download/35/chinook-technical-committee/10879/tcchinook-18-1-v2.pdf

You'll have to scroll down to page 50/154 in the PDF to see it. All the numbers I am citing come from the final row in the table.

_________________________
"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey)

"If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman)


The Keen Eye MD
Long Live the Kings!

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#997347 - 11/22/18 01:38 PM Re: NO BULL.... [Re: eyeFISH]
eyeFISH Offline
Ornamental Rice Bowl

Registered: 11/24/03
Posts: 12766
Progress? Or is it just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

http://oregoncoastdailynews.com/2018...EFPOeF1Zz9OlaY
_________________________
"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey)

"If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman)


The Keen Eye MD
Long Live the Kings!

Top
#997348 - 11/22/18 02:41 PM Re: NO BULL.... [Re: eyeFISH]
Carcassman Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 11/21/07
Posts: 7411
Loc: Olema,California,Planet Earth
Rearranging the deck chairs. Easier to do that than to have (in the case of Titanic) watching where they were going at the appropriate speed, having enough life boats, and so on. Maintaining course is always easiest.

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#997349 - 11/22/18 02:57 PM Re: BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings! [Re: Carcassman]
eyeFISH Offline
Ornamental Rice Bowl

Registered: 11/24/03
Posts: 12766
Originally Posted By: Carcassman
Gotta put those hatchery fish out there to provide "cover" for the wild fish.



Yeah.... never understood that one, but there are a LOT of folks touting that very strategy right now.
_________________________
"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey)

"If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman)


The Keen Eye MD
Long Live the Kings!

Top
#997350 - 11/22/18 05:13 PM Re: BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings! [Re: eyeFISH]
Carcassman Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 11/21/07
Posts: 7411
Loc: Olema,California,Planet Earth
Koenings offered Canada hatchery Chinook (marked, from WB) if they would go selective and get off the wild Chinook.

Providing cover makes sense only when the target stock vastly outnumbers the stock to be released. Like 10:1 or more, maybe 20. Otherwise, release mortality will be excessive.

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#997365 - 11/23/18 01:43 PM Re: BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings! [Re: eyeFISH]
eyeFISH Offline
Ornamental Rice Bowl

Registered: 11/24/03
Posts: 12766
I believe the mathematical break even point on dead wild fish goes something like this.

A mark select fishery only makes sense whenever the mark rate exceeds the release mortality rate. If it's not at least that high, it's pointless to go mark select.

The excessive sorting actually results in MORE dead wilds... take for example ocean coho.

The main difference between mark select and "kill the first two" is the total number of encounters required to get the job done.... and whether the wild fish end up in the bottom of the box or on the bottom as crab bait.
_________________________
"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey)

"If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman)


The Keen Eye MD
Long Live the Kings!

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#1060229 - 08/10/22 08:11 PM Re: BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings! [Re: eyeFISH]
eyeFISH Offline
Ornamental Rice Bowl

Registered: 11/24/03
Posts: 12766
_________________________
"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey)

"If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman)


The Keen Eye MD
Long Live the Kings!

Top
#1060230 - 08/10/22 08:34 PM Re: BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings! [Re: eyeFISH]
Carcassman Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 11/21/07
Posts: 7411
Loc: Olema,California,Planet Earth
Interesting to hear the appeals.....

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#1060231 - 08/10/22 08:35 PM Re: BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings! [Re: eyeFISH]
seabeckraised Offline
Juvenile at Sea

Registered: 05/12/21
Posts: 230
Loc: Mason County
Just saw this on social media a few minutes ago. Seems big, but not holding my breath for this to take effect. Pretty green in my understanding of all this compared to some on this forum, but non-selective commercial fisheries seem to be a pretty major factor in our declining stocks. Seeing stuff like this gives me hope.

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#1060232 - 08/10/22 09:12 PM Re: BEST place to catch WA Coastal kings! [Re: eyeFISH]
eyeFISH Offline
Ornamental Rice Bowl

Registered: 11/24/03
Posts: 12766
Hey... at least someone is trying. Ya gotta at least give 'em CREDIT for that.
_________________________
"Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to find the fish were gone." (Zane Grey)

"If you don't kill them, they will spawn." (Carcassman)


The Keen Eye MD
Long Live the Kings!

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