Crawfish & Deep Inlet Update – August 21 2019

The summer run chum at Deep Inlet came in well below forecast (30%) but close to the 25 year historical average of 320,000 chum. The fall run (Medvejie stock) appears to be doing comparatively better, although a later run timing than normal, with 203,000 chum harvested last week (Week 33). The gillnet catch has improved considerably this week and there are signs of chum throughout Eastern Channel, Silver Bay, and the Eckholm Island group. Today was the first day we’ve seen large schools along Camp Coogan to Sugarloaf making their way to Medvejie Hatchery. Based on the Deep Inlet fall run harvest of 370,000 chum so far, the run should go over a million fish.

Crawfish Inlet has mostly been a troll show with 125,000 chum harvested, but that is likely to change dramatically with the Sunday seine opening. Like 2018, most of the chum have entered the area via West Crawfish Inlet and have remained outside of Crawfish Inlet THA, although there have been small seine harvests to date. A strong weather front with high winds and rain on Thursday night should send a large biomass of chum into Crawfish Inlet by Friday and Saturday. In fact, chum are beginning to move down Cedar Pass and turning east as of this morning. Based on the troll catch, pilot observations, sex ratio, and run timing the Crawfish run will likely surpass 1.3 million fish. The seine harvest on Sunday will tell us a lot about run strength. The full seine THA will open on Sunday in anticipation of large push of fish and over a hundred seiners.  After the fish are cleaned up at the head of the inlet, I would like to know what the boats are catching per hour at the two hook offs at the mouth of Crawfish Inlet. This information will be important to know when deciding on a mid week opening.

Last night and this morning we harvested about 400,000 pounds of chum (50,000 fish) at the head inlet of West Crawfish, by request of the department. Most of the remaining fish in the inlet and in Shamrock Bay will move to Crawfish once the storm winds and rain arrive.