Louisiana yellowfin seasonal landings and effort comparison
Status: local review draft; exploratory descriptive analysis, not an official LDWF product
Query date: October 21, 2026

Source: LDWF LA Creel Data Query, https://ldwfpublic.wlf.louisiana.gov/lacreelquery/default.aspx
Landing query: Harvest/Catch; 2014 through 2025; All Months By Month; All Activity By Activity; Offshore; Yellowfin Tuna. Retain Charter Boat rows.
Effort query: Effort/Trip; same year, month, basin and activity filters; retain Charter Boat rows.
Fields: catch Year, Month, Basin Name, Species Common Name, Activity, Landings (# of fish), RSE; effort Year, Month, Basin Name, Activity, Effort (Angler trips), RSE.

The browser result tables contained 129 displayed yellowfin/charter/offshore catch estimates and 144 charter/offshore effort estimates. The query's own export was not retained in this local packet. The annual-index.csv and season-summary.csv files preserve the transcribed aggregates used in the article; rerun the source filters above for the underlying estimate rows. These files are not raw agency microdata.

For each calendar year and season, sum the displayed yellowfin landings estimates for the season's months and divide by the sum of matching estimated offshore charter angler trips for months with a displayed catch estimate. Spring is March-May; summer is June-August; fall is September-November; winter is January, February and December within the same calendar-year group. A catch month without a displayed row is missing, not assumed zero. A season-year is complete only when all three catch-month estimates are displayed.

The annual index is a ratio of separately estimated totals, not a trip-level CPUE estimator or catch probability. Summarize complete annual season indices with the conventional median (the mean of the two middle values for an even number of years), range and count of complete years. The supplied annual-index.csv records ratios to six decimal places for these summary calculations; article and chart values are rounded to three decimals. The pooled descriptive index is total displayed landings divided by corresponding effort for months with catch rows; it is context only and is not used as the primary comparison. No confidence interval was calculated: the query does not publish the covariance needed to combine catch and effort RSEs. No significance test, causal model, weather correction, target-effort correction, fish-size analysis or forecast was attempted.

LDWF's LA Creel page defines harvest/catch as estimated fish landed and effort as estimated individual angler trips. It advises increasing caution above RSE 30 and identifies RSE above 50 as high variability/low precision. Our catch rows include 104/129 RSE values above 30 and 34/129 above 50. Effort rows include 104/144 above 30 and 37/144 above 50. The 2014-2025 pre-2014 comparability warning is avoided by not combining older NOAA/MRIP estimates.

The source query may be updated by LDWF. Re-run and compare against the saved annual-index.csv before revising narrative results. Review current rules separately; this historic catch/effort comparison is not a rules source. Local draft reviewed October 21, 2026.