The final recreational halibut catch numbers are still being finalized. At this juncture the season closed early because the preliminary catch data available to the Halibut Working Group showed there was potentially a small overage. Recreational underages are not banked and carried over from one calendar year to the next. However, overages from the previous season (2023) are deducted from the available TAC for the new season (2024). No final decision has been reached as of this time if there is an overage that would be deducted.
The only TAC that can be carried over from one season to the next is the Commercial Halibut quota holders can carry over up to 10% of their prior season's un-used quota.
The reason the limit was increased to allow retaining 2 small halibut in one day mid season was at that time, available catch data was indicating we were tracking below the expected catch, and if that trend continued we would not use our available TAC. Unfortunately after the decision was made to increase the daily limit, we encountered really good weather which allows more effort to be directed at halibut and also the salmon fishing was so good that people caught their salmon earlier in the day and ventured out halibut fishing. Isn't something that usually takes place. Predicting fishing effort and angler behaviour is very complicated and nearly impossible to get right.
From my read of the IPHC data its looking like the dominant age class that will be catchable in our upcoming fishery will come from the 2012 cohort of spawners. The prior dominant age classes which are now the large fish we encountered are starting to age-out of the fishery, so we will see fewer large fish. More likely the dominant size class will be fish near the 80-90 cm mark in size.
For the IPHC, the conern going forward is there hasn't been a strong signal in the available set line survey data showing another large number of fish coming up from an earlier than the dominant 2012 cohort. There is some emerging evidence that suggests there was a successful spawn in the 2014 spawning cycle - but bit too early to fully assess with confidence. While possibly being some good news, its hard to predict how the IPHC will take that into account when assessing future fishery risk, available harvest biomass, and ultimately how much TAC will be fished by the contracting parties (US and Canada).
We will know the answer by the end of next week.