Annual Postseason Report 2003-04 Fishing Season: Comprehensive Management Plan for Puget Sound Chinook: Harvest Management Component PDF Format - [3.29MB] See Also: Comprehensive Management Plan for Puget Sound Chinook: Harvest Management Component Annual Postseason Reports: Annual Postseason Report 2005-06 Fishing Season - Comprehensive Management Plan for Puget Sound Chinook: Harvest Management Component Annual Postseason Report 2004-05 Fishing Season - Comprehensive Management Plan for Puget Sound Chinook: Harvest Management Component Annual Postseason Report 2003-04 Fishing Season - Comprehensive Management Plan for Puget Sound Chinook: Harvest Management Component

Annual Postseason Report 2003-04 Fishing Season Comprehensive Management Plan for Puget Sound Chinook: Harvest Management Component: By Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and Puget Sound Indian Tribes August 16, 2004 Executive Summary Overall outcomes from 2003-04 fisheries were disappointing. Spawning escapement for some Puget Sound chinook populations did not meet preseason expectations, and total (preliminary) chinook catches in Puget Sound recreational and commercial fisheries were down about 60% from preseason expectations. Much of this shortfall can be attributed to higher-than-expected impacts in Canadian fisheries. Actual landed catches in Canadian fisheries exceeded preseason expectation by about 36%, or over 100,000 fish. Introduction The Co-managers’ Puget Sound Chinook Harvest Management Plan (HMP) mandates an annual report documenting the performance of chinook harvest management relative to the standards and guidelines of the plan (PSIT and WDFW 2001). The present report fulfills that requirement by assessing the performance and effectiveness of fishery management actions adopted for the most recent management year. Included in this report are: Population guidelines, preseason projected exploitation rates and preliminary postseason spawning escapements Fishery descriptions, including preseason projected catch and preliminary postseason catch estimates, and providing information about inseason regulation changes Recent historic exploitation rates, catches and spawners Descriptions of monitoring programs, including sample rates. The annual management plan implementation period extends from May 1, 2003, through April 30, 2004 - the time period referred to as the “2003-04 management year”. Although preliminary spawning escapement estimates and harvest numbers for net fisheries for 2003-04 are available, review of these estimates is still underway and further adjustments are expected. Therefore, ALL 2003-04 SEASON DATA PROVIDED IN THIS REPORT ARE TO BE CONSIDERED PRELIMINARY and subject to revision. Puget Sound recreational fishery harvest estimates that come from catch record cards are not available because the process of collecting catch records, data input, editing and analysis takes almost two years to complete. Exploitation rates, the primary measure of plan performance, are delayed many years as well. These estimates use coded-wire tags, and must collect those tags for an entire brood (three to five years for chinook), so actual exploitation rates, for comparison with plan guidelines and preseason projections, are not a vailable for at least three years after a fishery has occurred. For these reasons, this report will not contain all of the information necessary to review plan performance for the most recent management year. Final recent-historic catch, spawner and exploitation rate information will be reported in subsequent reports with a retrospective review of plan performance. This year’s report will provide a historic perspective of catches and escapements through 2002, and exploitation rates for the 1998-2000 management years.