Area 11 closed to kings...

[trophyhunt]

  I try to back up wdfw at times on here, but damn this is such BS.  I wonder if another user group played a big part in this closure???  First they close crabbing in 11 to days when you can fish for salmon, now they close kings, only silvers.  We caught one silver two weeks ago, and my cousin only caught kings last sat, didn't see a king netted by others.  The money spent to get out there and fish and they close it down because supposedly it's too good???  Hate this F'n state at times.

[bigdub257]

They multiply the actual catch times 5 and say the quota has been reached and shut it down.  Gets worse every year.  They make agreements during negotiations that are spineless at best.  Hunting and fishing in this state will be a thing of the past before you know it.  Let's just hope they don't start messing with area 13 next!

[Crunchy]

they way underestimated the return this year.  When there are so many fish being caught it means there numbers are wrong.  why not give the rec fisherman a break for once and go a little over the quota?

[GASoline71]

It's frustrating as hell.  Up here in Area 9 they closed chinook over a week ago.  Now while fishing for Coho, the Kings are dang near are as thick as Humpies, and you can't keep the damn things off you line while trying for Silvers.   

Gary

[Stein]

they way underestimated the return this year.  When there are so many fish being caught it means there numbers are wrong.  why not give the rec fisherman a break for once and go a little over the quota?

They would need procedures in place for that and it would require significant work.  Some states do this work, ours doesn't.  Outside of the dams, we have pretty primitive tools to determine how the run is going - mainly the checkers at the dock and the green boat they send fishing.  Co-managers likely have little desire to up the rec or non-tribal commercial harvest and the state would rather push the easy button than confront the issue which 95% of the time is the system the state put in place.

[bigdub257]

Does anybody know what the actual expected returns for the marine areas were and how they come up with the quotas?  Taking area 11 as an example, they agreed on a sport catch harvest quota of 2800 fish.  Then they agree to throw "encounters" into the mix at the rate of 4 or 5 to one.  I don't know what their exact formula is but that equals 560-700 kings allowed to be retained for the entire summer fishery by the sport fishers.  Are they also factoring in the "encounters" with kings that will occur during the coho fishery? 
Maybe they should have a lottery for giving away surplus kings at the hatcheries when the escapement has been met.  We could all have full freezers!

[Stein]

I'm not sure about down there, but up in 9/8-2 land there are two things that COULD determine the allowable take:

1.  The run size of the actual fish you are targeting (Snohomish hatchery chinook for example).
2.  Impacts to ESA fish that may be caught (Stilly chinook for example).

In our case, it's virtually always #2 that limits the allowable rec harvest, thus there could be 6 million clipped chinook returning to the Snoho yet the quota would not go up unless the Stilly ESA fish returns improved.  They determine that X Stilly fish can be caught and then run that through the model and it gives you the total number of rec encounters for the area. 

There are a few ESA fish that pretty much ruin it for the entire area.

They also seem to do some crazy trades that defy logic like taking quota from 7 and adding it somewhere from a totally different river system.  They can also move quota around in time, like taking from winter blackmouth to add quota to summer fishing.

I could be wrong, but that's my understanding.

[salmosalar]

Does anybody know what the actual expected returns for the marine areas were and how they come up with the quotas?  Taking area 11 as an example, they agreed on a sport catch harvest quota of 2800 fish.  Then they agree to throw "encounters" into the mix at the rate of 4 or 5 to one.  I don't know what their exact formula is but that equals 560-700 kings allowed to be retained for the entire summer fishery by the sport fishers.  Are they also factoring in the "encounters" with kings that will occur during the coho fishery? 
Maybe they should have a lottery for giving away surplus kings at the hatcheries when the escapement has been met.  We could all have full freezers!

It is usually dictated by the amount of fish that can be killed for the limiting river. The problem with saltwater fisheries is that you catch fish going to many different rivers. So if you are in area 9, the Stilliguamish will limit the amount of fish that can be taken in the salt. If the Stilly only has 100 harvestable fish, then the number is set on the amount of fish that can be caught before 100 Stilly fish can be expected to die. Encounters with sublegals and wild fish are counted. In fact, the limiting factor is often wild fish encounters since some do die even though they are returned. The tribes do play a role in this and the numbers are agreed upon at North of Falcon. Oddly, the Stilly limitting stock is hatchery but don't let that hurt your head.

With as many ESA listed runs that we have in the Puget Sound as well as impacts to whales, it's easier to make the case that there should be no salt water fishing than it is to make a case that there should be limited fishing. In-river fisheries are far easier to justify because it can be assumed that 100% of the fish caught in the Nisqually fish are from the Nisqually.

In my opinion, the only way that the Fed's will issue a permit for King harvest in any portion of Puget Sound is by WDFW piggybacking on the tribal permit. This gives them no leverage. However, if they went it alone, I believe NMFS would not approve take of any kind from non-tribal fishermen in the salt. NMFS is far less willing to constrain tribal fishing. So my firm belief is that the only way anyone gets to fish kings in the salt is by piggybacking with the tribes permit that is rubber stamped by the BIA. It keeps NMFS from making the permitting decision.

King runs should be up over projections. Ocean conditions have clearly been favorable and BC cut a lot of harvest the last 2 years, especially longline fisheries that take a lot of Wa origin kings. I am hopeful steelhead runs will trend up as well, due to the Ocean conditions.

[Jake Dogfish]

They multiply the actual catch times 5 and say the quota has been reached and shut it down.  Gets worse every year.  They make agreements during negotiations that are spineless at best.  Hunting and fishing in this state will be a thing of the past before you know it.  Let's just hope they don't start messing with area 13 next!

 

They will. 
If you look at how they calculate sport catch in rivers as of 2019 they are using a expansion factor of 11x.  This means if someone turns in a full punch card of 26 fish they add 286 fish to the sport caught total.  The expansion factor was 2 for awhile, then 3, but it goes up every year to make it look like we are catching fish at a similar rate.  These numbers are used at NOF for season setting, and used to divide tribal/non tribal and sport/commercial.  Tribal and commercial fisheries don’t have a expansion factor.  Their catch is only what they report.
I don’t know exactly how marine fisheries are calculated.  If it is similar to freshwater then you would divide the 2800 by 11 to find the reported catch.  Some catch does go unreported, but I don’t understand how they went from less than double to 11x over the years. 
Also the Marine area 11 fishery was closed due to “estimated” actual catch, not encounters or esa concerns.