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Fisheries stock assessments rely heavily on historical catch information to understand how a stock responds to exploitation and make meaningful forecasts under alternative management and environmental scenarios. However, for many bycatch species historical removals are virtually unknown, as a large portion of the catch was discarded at sea. For example, historical discard of elasmobranch species such as skates and sharks have been reported as 95 percent of the total catch based on available data. The longnose skate is one the most abundant groundfishes on the continental slope of the U.S. Pacific Coast by biomass, and the most abundant skate species in the Northeast Pacific Ocean. We developed a method to estimate catch of longnose skate on the U.S. West Coast based on the catch of Dover sole, a co-occurring targeted species with which longnose skate is caught. This method allowed us to …