The Crawfish Inlet Chum project continues to surprise with decent numbers of chum still moving into the area. Catch for the Thursday/Friday opening looks to be strong and will likely approach 100k. We have now exceeded 1 million total return to the project and it looks as it may top out over 1.2 million chum or around 80% of forecast, which is significantly better than any other NSRAA chum project this year. While the seine fleet numbers have dwindled, the remaining boats are able to add a little income to what will be the worst year for the seine fleet in decades. Openings are scheduled to continue Thur/Fri and Sunday through Sept 25th.
Chum returns to Medvejie/Bear Cove continue to look weak. To date we have gone through 45k chum brood stock and have taken a total of 40 million eggs leaving another 62 million to go. So far 3 year olds are making up 60% of the hatchery rack return. Sex ratio at the hatchery rack has averaged 60% male for the first two weeks of the egg take which further slows egg collection efforts. Starting Monday we will begin capturing and moving chum brood stock from Deep Inlet to Bear Cove. Current plan is to move approximately 20k adults Monday through Wednesday. We will then assess remaining brood and egg needs at Bear Cove to determine if additional brood capture is necessary. By Wednesday of next week we should be 60% complete on our fall chum egg take at our current rate. As of Thursday chum numbers at the head of Deep Inlet were by no means overwhelming and estimated at 5-10k fish. There are no plans to reopen Deep Inlet as remaining brood stock needs will likely utilize the remainder of the return.
Finally, it looks like we will have a few days of sunny weather in a row which will hopefully help all of our dispositions in an all around very gloomy year.
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