could be an intresting springer season.

[chrome_junky]

just had this emailed to me. [url "http://lmtribune.com/blogs/scrawl_of_the_wild/article_71128dec-5dd3-11e3-a66d-001a4bcf6878.html"]http://lmtribune.com/blogs/scrawl_of_the_wild/article_71128dec-5dd3-11e3-a66d-001a4bcf6878.html[/url]
its a more optimistic prediction than last years.
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[phutch30]

With the jack numbers back to some of the ID hatcheries it should be good. RR's return was almost 50% jacks. Prob is the last 6-10 years the jack returns havent been corrilating well with adult returns. They have had to develope new estimation formulas that seem to still need some adjustment.

I think (hope) we are in for a good year though.
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[Got_Bait]

First of all, 123k IS huge. Good enough for the second largest in history by my measure anyway. Nevertheless, I am not getting my hopes up, nor am I going to even worry about it until the Bonnie counts get rolling in April (probably late April at that).

Secondly, I don't think that the correlation has been all that bad. Looking at the correlation between jack return and following year's adult return (going all the way back to when they starting counting jacks at LG in 1980) gives an R-squared of .81. Pretty good in my book. And the only instances I can see that the jack return would have severely under-predicted the ensuing adult return were the '09 Jack > '10 Adult, and the '11 Jack > '12 Adult. It is actually slightly more common for the jack return to over-estimate the adult return using that .81 R-squared (3 over-est outliers vs. 2 under-est outliers).

Luckily, our agencies use far more complex models however, than simple jack > adult regression analysis.
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[BorntoFish01]

I have no faith in their projections anymore. That being said, I'll hold off on my excitement until the Bonneville counts give a better picture of numbers coming upriver.
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[STEELHEADKID]

Could really care less about projections myself anymore....... If we get a season great! I'll harvest what they allow me to just like any other year and enjoy myself while fishing for such a great fish on an Idaho river.
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[idtroutfool]

Won't matter as long as 50% of the fish caught in the lower columbia are Idaho fish. At least I can look at the Oregon and Washington photos and see the joy that my license dollars have brought them.

If the lower Columbia seasons were more restrictive we would see a lot more fish over Lower Granite.
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