2015-16 Winter Mark-Selective Recreational Chinook Fisheries In Marine Areas 5, 6, 7, 8-1, 8-2, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13

In recent years, abundant runs of hatchery Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) have been mixed with depressed runs of wild Chinook salmon in the marine environments of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound. Providing recreational anglers with opportunities to harvest abundant hatchery stocks while simultaneously protecting weaker, wild stocks has proven to be a significant conservation and management challenge. The combination of large-scale hatchery marking (i.e., fin clipping) programs and mark-selective harvest regulations makes it possible for anglers to pursue and harvest hatchery Chinook salmon while minimally impacting wild salmon populations. In such “mark-selective fisheries” (MSFs), anglers are generally allowed to retain adipose-fin clipped (“marked”) hatchery fish and are required to release unharmed any unclipped (“unmarked”, predominantly wild) salmon encountered.

Since the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) implemented the first marine mark-selective Chinook fisheries in Marine Catch Areas 5 and 6 (Strait of Juan de Fuca) in 2003 based on state-tribal agreements (Thiesfeld and Hagen-Breaux 2005a ,WDFW 2008a), mark-selective Chinook salmon fishing regulations have been implemented in multiple Puget Sound Marine Catch Areas during both the summer and winter seasons. As of the close of the summer 2016 fishing season, summer Chinook MSFs have occurred in Areas 5 and 6 for fourteen consecutive seasons, in Areas 9, 10, 11, and 13 for ten consecutive seasons and in Area 12 for five consecutive seasons. Additionally, winter Chinook MSFs have occurred in Areas 8-1 and 8-2 for eleven consecutive seasons, in Areas 7, 9 and 10 for nine consecutive seasons, in Areas 11 and 12 for seven consecutive seasons, in Area 6 for four seasons, and the second seasons for both Area 5 and Area 13.

During the 2015-16 winter season (October 2015 through April 2016), WDFW implemented ten Chinook MSFs in Areas 5, 6, 7, 8-1, 8-2, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. The scheduled seasons in each of the areas were as follows:
• Area 5 from October 1-31, 2015 and February 16, 2016 through April 30, 2016;
• Area 6 from December 1, 2015 through April 10, 2016;
• Area 7 from October 1-31, 2015 and December 1, 2015 through April 30, 2016;
• Areas 8-1 and 8-2 from November 1, 2015 through April 30, 2016;
• Area 9 from November 1-30, 2015 and January 16 – April 15, 2016;
• Area 10 from October 1, 2015 through January 31, 2016;
• Area 11 from October 1 – December 31, 2015 and February 1, 2016 - April 30, 2016;
• Area 12 from October 1 – December 31, 2015 and February 1 - April 30, 2016 and
• Area 13 from October 1, 2015 – April 30, 2016.

Consistent with the 2004 (and 2010 update) Puget Sound Chinook Harvest Management Plan (Puget Sound Indian Tribes and WDFW 2004 and 2010), a key goal of implementing each of these Chinook MSFs has been to provide meaningful opportunity to the recreational angling public while minimally impacting ESA-listed Puget Sound Chinook salmon.

Comprehensive Sampling and Monitoring Program

WDFW’s Puget Sound Sampling Unit (PSSU) was tasked with implementing a comprehensive sampling and monitoring program in Areas 5, 6, 7, 8-1, 8-2, 9,10,11, 12 and 13 to collect the data needed to evaluate each Chinook MSF and its impact on unmarked salmon. Through state-tribal agreement (WDFW and NWIFC 2014), we developed area-specific sampling plans consisting of several comprehensive and complementary sampling components, including dockside creel sampling, test fishing, on-water or aerial effort surveys, and angler-completed voluntary trip reports (VTRs). We tailored area-specific sampling plans so that we could reliably estimate the following critical parameters needed for evaluating MSFs:
i) the mark rate of the targeted Chinook population
ii) the total number of Chinook salmon harvested (by size [legal or sublegal] and mark-status [marked or unmarked] group)
iii) the total number of Chinook salmon released (by size and mark-status group)
iv) the coded-wire tag (CWT) and/or DNA-based stock composition of marked and unmarked Chinook mortalities
v) the total mortality of marked and unmarked double index tag (DIT) CWT stocks

In addition, we acquired and analyzed relevant data characterizing other aspects of the fisheries, including descriptors of fishing effort, fishing success (catch [landed Chinook] per unit effort), the length composition of encountered Chinook, and the overall intensity of our sampling efforts.

Reporting Efficiencies

In July 2010, technical staffs from the WDFW Puget Sound Sampling Unit, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission (NWIFC), and Puget Sound Treaty Tribes met to discuss potential reporting efficiencies in WDFW’s Chinook MSF post-season reports. NWIFC and tribal representatives had initiated the idea for such a meeting, considering that WDFW had been submitting a separate post-season report for each area and season (since 2003) to the co-managers, resulting in redundancies between individual reports, particularly in the Methods section. Also, over the years we kept adding sections to the selective fishery annual reports, in response to individual tribal co-manager requests, and sustained those additions in each future report, resulting in ever-lengthening post-season reports. From both the WDFW and tribal technical perspectives, we needed to prioritize the most essential reporting elements and achieve efficiencies to streamline the selective fishery reporting work load.

Thus, at the July 2010 meeting the WDFW and tribal staffs worked on prioritizing the most essential elements (i.e., tables, figures, and appendices) needed in WDFW’s annual post-season selective fishery reports in an effort to define reporting efficiencies. Based on these decisions (details available in a WDFW memo dated August 16, 2010 summarizing the July 2010 meeting), we began implementing reporting efficiencies starting with the 2009-10 winter Chinook MSF post-season report and continuing thereafter.

At the July 2010 meeting we also agreed that a key efficiency in the annual reporting process would be for WDFW staff to produce a centralized Methods Report. The Methods Report would be a stand-alone document that includes the details of each area’s Chinook MSF study design (for both winter and summer fisheries), sampling procedures, data analysis methods, and all equations used to generate estimates and variances. Thus, we refer the reader to our Methods Report (WDFW 2012a) for detailed descriptions of the diverse study designs and protocols used to monitor and evaluate the Chinook MSFs in Areas 5, 6, 7, 8-1, 8-2, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13.

In the following pages, we report the results generated through our monitoring activities during the 2015-16 winter Chinook MSFs. We report results based on our more efficient reporting format agreed-to between state and tribal technical representatives, in which we focus on presenting data tables and figures rather than interpretive text (unless text is needed to specify noteworthy in-season adjustments or other circumstances unique to the particular season). We present 2015-16 winter Chinook MSF results in separate chapters (1 through 7) by area, and within each chapter the data are presented in a series of tables and figures generally according to the following sequence: i) estimates of fishery characteristics obtained from the dockside creel survey data, including catch and effort total estimates, Chinook length-frequency data, and CWT recovery results; ii) results from our recreational test fishery (where applicable); iii) results from our VTR collection efforts; iv) total mortality estimates of marked and unmarked DIT CWT stocks by hatchery and brood year; v) total fishery Chinook encounters and impacts—estimated based on creel survey and test fishery or VTR data—which we compare with pre-season expectations (based on Fishery Regulation Assessment Model [FRAM] predictions); vi) sample rate information based on dockside sampling of harvested Chinook; and vii) historical Chinook encounters estimates for each area’s winter Chinook MSF.