FY 2022 SRSC Implementation and Monitoring of Skagit Salmon Recovery Goals: Test Fisheries and Escapement Monitoring

This project funded a Field Biologist and Fisheries Technicians to conduct a single-boat test fishery for Chinook Salmon in the lower Skagit River, one day per week from May through August, and a Coho Salmon/Chum Salmon test fishery in the lower Skagit River from August through November. The test fishery was conducted with a river skiff and fished with a drift gillnet.



In addition, spawn ground surveys (redd and carcass counts) were conducted for Chinook Salmon, Coho Salmon, and Chum Salmon in the upper Skagit River two days a week from September to December. The information generated from this monitoring was used to estimate in-season changes in run composition and add to a long-term dataset to evaluate changes in population status, timing phenology, and reconstruct fisheries impacts to ensure salmon populations met Recovery goal objectives or were managed at sustainable levels.



All test fisheries were conducted at Blakes drift in the lower Skagit River. The Chinook test fishery was conducted in two temporal segments that began with each high tide and continued for 3 hours after high tide (i.e., 6 hours total per test day). Test fisheries for Coho and Chum began with the PM high tide and continued for 12 hours.

The test fishery provides information that addresses all major categories of limiting factors: habitat, harvest, and artificial production. All project objectives associated with test fisheries align with NOAA priorities 1, 2, and 3 for CY2023-2024. All project objectives associated with this project will provide invaluable information that will allow quantitative assessments of whether management decisions or actions within each category are having positive or negative effects on the productivity of target stocks of ESA. Therefore, management decisions related to each limiting factor category can be adaptively altered based on the outcome of analyses of data from test fisheries.



The actions from this specific project are combined with efforts by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Upper Skagit Tribe, Swinomish Tribe, and Sauk-Suaittle Tribe to provide a complete evaluation of returning adult salmon in the Skagit. These data have provided evidence-based approaches for salmon management common in the Skagit River basin.