Crawfish Inlet SHA to Open Sept. 13
There will be a common property seine opening at Crawfish Inlet on Thursday September 13th. Look for the official ADF&G announcement on Tuesday September 11th. I expect there will be one or two additional openings to clean up the tail-end of the run (announcement possibly on Friday, September 14th). Cost recovery is expected to harvest <one million pounds total between today and Tuesday with no cost recovery on Wednesday. The run to date is just over 3 million fish; 1.6 million have been harvested by the seine fleet and 220,000 by the troll fleet. Approximately 480,000 chum were...
Read MoreCrawfish Inlet to Open Thursday Sept. 6
We will suspend cost recovery after Wednesday and have a common property seine opening Thursday September 6th. I will need to confer with ADF&G tomorrow morning for this to be official; expect ADF&G to get an announcement out Tuesday afternoon. Sampling at Shamrock Bay and Crawfish Inlet today showed brighter fish and slightly more females at Shamrock. My observations on the two harvest boats and tender in Shamrock Bay was no very dark or nasty chum and only low numbers of gillers in the web. Fish density in Shamrock was lower than expected with only 200,000 lbs of chum taken. This...
Read MoreCrawfish Inlet Update September 3
The Crawfish Inlet run continues to develop with exceptionally strong 3s at about 82% of the run or 1.5 million fish, and surprisingly low 4s (330,000 fish), although not terrible, lower than expected. The run isn’t over so I am hoping more of the remaining females are 4s rather than 3s. We are seeing a bump in female ratio with the last two CR harvests and seine samples close to 40%. Today’s CR harvest appears closer to 50%. The sex ratio is another anomaly – 75% males so far, this is likely driven by the high number of 3s which tend to be precocious males. These unusual...
Read MoreCrawfish Inlet Chum Program Update
Crawfish Inlet is NSRAA’s latest chum salmon program to come online. This year is the first year for 4 year olds from a 13 million fry release (’15) and the second year for 3 year olds from a 27 million fry release (’16). Survival on both these broodyears has been quite high. The return so far has included 100,000 troll caught chum, 220,000 cost recovery chum, and 150,000 common property seine caught chum for a total of 470,000 fish. This doesn’t count Crawfish chum caught in Redoubt, Sitka Sound or Deep Inlet. The preseason estimate was 680,000 chum, although it...
Read MoreHidden Falls – Seine Closed Until Further Notice for Broodstock
Hidden Falls seine openings will not occur after July 12 until broodstock is secure. This may take two to three weeks as we need about 200,000 chum or 190 million eggs for Hidden Falls, S.E. Cove, Thomas Bay, and Deep Inlet release sites. Sex ratio on July 8 opening was 64% likely skewed high due to large proportion of 3 year males. Catch rate and harvest have declined the past few openings. The 3-year old component has been the highest in history, beginning at 5% and rising to 21% on July 8. Hoping this is good omen for next year. S.E. Cove also has a high proportion of 3-year olds. Tip of...
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