The Outdoor Line Forum

"Thank You" Olympic Peninsula Salmon Derby for contributing to the high encounter guidelines rate for MA6. Largely due to the derby this past weekend, the encounter rate jumped from 55% to 74% for MA6. Sorry, but in this day and age with limited fish allowed to be caught and/or released, this derby along with others need to stop. Derbies draw too much attention to any one marine area. I understand the proceeds from these derbies benefit communities or organizations, but there are other ways to obtain funds for whatever reasoning to host a derby.
Supposedly releases were not tracked during this derby and thank goodness they weren't cause we'd be done at this point. WDFW needs to look at their formulas for assigning encounter guidelines per area, of the five marine areas listed on the WDFW "Fishing Reports, Stocking Reports & Fish Counts", MA6 which is one of the largest areas in size has the second lowest encounter guidelines, something is wrong here.
Stop the derby!!!

Hey Grizz,
I understand your position but derbies are not the problem and sportfishers whos license fee revenue pay for these hatchery fish are also not the problem.

The problem is this new "encounter threshold" management methodology.

Prior to 2013 we fished to a season and outgoing WDFW Director Phil Anderson and Assistant Director Jim Scott agreed to this management scheme with the co-managers OUTSIDE the North of Falcon process.

Here's the problem: Only 10-15% of a year-class of chinook released from our hatcheries residualize or remain in Puget Sound and become available in the winter chinook fishery. The vast majority are out in the oceanic pasture maturing and getting ready for their eventual spawning run. So, in essence, we're micro-managing a fraction of the population which is highly migratory.

Plain and simple, in-season management need to go away. The co-managers do not utilize this facet of fisheries management and us non-tribal fishers should not either!

Good topic and thanks for bringing it up Grizz!

Grizz -

I agree with Tom; not only a good topic but timely as well.

While eliminating in-season monitoring and potential early season closures would be nice and lead to more stable fishery I don't see our Chinook season not being limited by individual catch guidelines/quotas for each MA (summer or winter) going away. This is due in large part to ESA concerns that need to stay within established ESA impacts that are shared between the co-managers. Those impacts are typically expressed as some % of the run.

I believe that there are a number of tribal fisheries that do have some sort of in-season management thought Tom is correct that is typically different than what is used for recreational fisheries. That is due in large part to where the bulk of the tribal and recreational fisheries occur. The bulk of the tribal fisheries occur in terminal areas where they are dealing with a single stock or two (there are exceptions) and recreational fisheries tend to be in marine waters with mixed stocks (there are exceptions), In a terminal fishery is pretty easy to model a fishery with an expected % impact on the run returning to the area (the catch may go up or down depending on the run size but the % caught). Because of the number of stocks in marine area mixed stock fisheries it does not necessarily follow that the limiting percentage would remain constant thus requiring that in season management.

Let's look at the MA 6 blackmouth fishery. In any season it is common that both immature and mature fish will be caught (multiple year classes) and often the catch will be comprised from stocks from a couple dozen stocks. Fish from Canada, Columbia River, coast and even as far as way as California. But more importantly the two years I looked at 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 there Chinook caught from 17 different stocks (all based on code wires). Of those Puget Sound those stocks included spring Chinook stocks (Nooksack, Skagit and White) summer Chinook stocks (Skagit, Stillaguamish, Skykomish) and a variety of fall stocks. In those various stocks there are 3 to 6 stocks whose impacts could easily constrain the fishery. With multiple brood years and stocks it is virtually impossible to be know whether once the catch quota is reached that there are remaining impacts allowed on one or more to the constraining stocks.

Each year the state has presents a package of fisheries that collectively stays within allowed ESA impacts (not saying that the sharing of those impacts is always fair) and then essentially shares those impacts across Puget Sound in the various summer and winter modeled fisheries. Because each MA fishery has some sort of different stock contribution transferring impacts from one area to another is rarely one to one.

We now have ending the 10th year of mark selective Chinook fishing in Puget Sound in might be interesting to look at post season reconstructions to see if those in-season management adjustments were actually needed to stay within all ESA impacts. My guess is that at least part of the time they were needed.

You raised the question of whether the quota for MA 6 in the winter was fair or not; probably not. One way to look at that issue is the opportunity; days on the water. According for the most recent pamphlet the following marine areas where scheduled to have the following time on the water.

For MA 6 has 1.5 months in the summer and 4.5 months in the winter; total of 6 months
MA 7 has 4 months in the summer and 5.0 months in the winter; total of 9 months
MA 8-1/8-2 has no summer season (except Tulalip bubble) and 5 months in winter; total of 5 months.
MA 9 has 1.0 months in the summer and 4.0 months in the winter; a total of 5 months.
MA 10 has 1.0 months in the summer and 4.0 months in the winter; a total of 5 months.

I'll leave it to you to determine if the above is a fair sharing.

Your question about derbies is interesting and it essentially boils down to the question of whether the impacts associated with derbies is worth a reduced time on the water. The answer of course depends on the individual angler and their priorities.

I have to wonder if it is time to review how the straits and Sound Chinook fisheries are constructed and consider adjustments. Clearly at time in one area means less time somewhere else. Such an effort would likely be fairly time consuming and require significant time commitment from both the anglers an the state (post NOF?). I don't see much interest in either party in investing the time needed to tackle this complex effort.

Curt

Tom and Curt, thanks for the replies and shedding some light on the topic. I posted my frustration from a "face-value" point of view. I guess I need to dig deeper into the management of the fishery, no matter what I still don't like the shortened season!!!!
Thanks gentleman !!!