Just a note to expand on the EYEfish summary for 2012.

2012 saw a harvestable Chinook run-size and it was back to business as usual…. with a full court press to maximize the harvest of paper fish while shirking the conservation of REAL fish.

When the NOF was in progress for 2012 the estimated Chehalis Chinook run size was 20,515 fish (mostly wild). The escapement goal was 12,942 leaving 7,573 harvestable fish. This was split up between the Quin, Commercials, Sports, and the Chehalis tribe. This is the critical run that determines how much fishing gets done in Grays Harbor.

After the season ended it became clear that actual harvest for all groups was about 50% of the modeled rate. It was'nt your fishing skill, the fish just were not there. What this means is that the actual run size was about 50% of the forecast or just over 10,000 fish. Clearly not enough for escapement alone! When the actual harvest is known it will probably exceed 4,000 fish!

So our plan to fish to the last paper fish resulted in an escapement of less than 6,000 fish or about half the escapement goal.

The above numbers are my harvest estimates and not from an official source.