You are probably correct in the assumption that the same gene encodes the protein which influences age at maturation and return between genera. I am just pointing out that it is an assumption being made that it is the same gene, albeit a likely assumption.

In 2015, or so, AK finds the Chinook getting smaller. Confirming what Bill Ricker published in the 1980s. Gave them 30 years to ignore the science. The initial discrediting of MSY was before that. And before that (late 60s, when I was in University) the problems of marine mixed stock fisheries for salmon were known.

And yet, all is more or less conveniently ignored to pursue business as usual.

This article states the reason for the decline of older/bigger fish is multivariate, such as sport fisherman targeting larger fish; but I can't help but think that by a large margin the main problem would have to be gillnets. Can there be any other large scale reason for the artificial selection of all these smaller fish?

Wait, softhackle... you DON'T always catch trophy fish when you target them?

Yeah, I thought that was a bit of a stretch, too, but upon further consideration, I realized that sporties have definitely done at least a small share of the damage, particularly in Alaska, where a lot of tourists congregate en masse on rivers like the Kenai, which is famous for it's trophy kings. Of course, that is a terminal area, so at least the fish caught there are from the same stock, and it's not removing big fish from virtually every gene pool, like the mixed stock fisheries in the ocean do.

The gikknets have some little to do with it but it continues to be MARINE MIXED STOCK fisheries on immature fish that prevents fish fro getting older. The gallant, in the terminal area, is fishing on adults who have made the irreversible decision to spawn. If the fishery is size selective-and Ricker saw it working both ways-the survivors who spawn will be larger or smaller than the total return, pre-fishing, was.l

Multifactorial indeed. We are burning the critter's candle at both ends, with incessant assaults on every life stage of its natural history. The older/larger phenotype is simply made to endure those assaults for a longer period of time.

That's not to say the specific impact on adult spawners in the river isn't significant. On the contrary, large mesh gillnets have been definitively implicated in the demise of older/larger chinook in the Yukon River. They act like an in-river sieve, taking out all the large breeders ( esp large hens) and allowing only the smaller fish to wiggle thru.

Concerning the charts eyeFish supplied on page one showing the concentration of tags recovered, I found some interesting statistics.

Even though Alaska attributes to app. 95% of total salmon commercially caught from the western coastal states of the US in 2014, the significant number to me is that Washington State did out harvest Alaska State in Chinook by 800,000 lbs.

In 2013 WA out harvested AK by 2,300,000 lbs. of Chinook which those last two years shows an upswing over 2012 going to advantage AK by 200,000 lbs.

If we are not getting enough Chinook back for escapement in our state of Washington Rivers, we might need to look at our own back yard of Washington State and Federal commercial fisheries. Even though you will not hear a complaint from me if we would get all instead of only partial of our Chinook back unscathed after their journey north.

ESA listed salmon are being fished over from here, up and back but not enough Puget Sound Chinook Salmon to be caught in Puget Sound Rivers for the most part. Something wrong with that picture.

No wonder this State is missing out and in the dumper compared to ALL US coastal states in nonresident licenses and tourism dollars that goes together hand and hand.