Returns in stat week 31 continued to be poor and below forecast for fall chum salmon at Deep Inlet. Historically stat week 31 is when the fall chum run catch begins to increase at Deep Inlet. This past week in stat wk 31 the catch actually dropped from week 30. Beginning on Saturday, July 31, strong troll catches of chum started to develop in Sitka Sound and continued into the first few days of the current stat week 32. There was considerable troll effort in the sound Monday through today but indications are per boat catch has dropped with the increased effort and change from calm sunny weather to overcast and rain. I was anticipating a pick up in the Deep Inlet catch this week in the net fisheries based upon the observations in the sound but that has yet to materialize. Concerns on run strength will increase substantially if we do not begin to see indications of a steady increase in run strength. Sitka Sound chum troll catch was sampled on Sunday Aug, 1 with 47% Deep Inlet origin, 30% Bear Cove/Medvejie Hatchery release and 15% Crawfish Inlet release. Age breakdown overall was ~12% 3-year olds, ~12% 5-year olds with 75% 4-year olds, 72% male and 7.8lb average. These numbers give me better confidence in where we are at in the run but the lack of volume is concerning.
West Crawfish started to show some potential last week for trollers then the bite tapered off and most of the trollers in West Crawfish moved up to Sitka sound over the weekend. There are still some in West Crawfish but the numbers have not built back up to where they were last week. Continue to have reports of fish in the outer portions of West Crawfish but no volume has moved into the Cedar Pass area or into Crawfish Inlet proper. We began cost recovery this morning in Crawfish Inlet at the head and have only harvested an estimated 76k lbs of chum.
We have nearly completed our summer run chum eggtake at all of our facilities. Chum eggtakes at Hidden Falls and Medvejie are complete with Hidden Falls making up a shortfall of 12 million of the 30 million goal at Medvejie. There are few summer chum left at Medvejie and we are beginning to see a few of the early fall chum beginning to mix in with the remaining summers. At Gunnuk we are currently 75% complete of our 20 million goal and with recent rain sufficient brood appear to making their way into the hatchery. If we fall short at Gunnuk Creek we are prepared to take additional at Hidden Falls if necessary. While it is great to make our brood stock goals there was insufficient returns to Hidden Falls to allow a commercial seine opening this year.
NSRAA project coho return troll catches have slowly ramped up beginning in stat week 29 and a weekly contribution of ~2,500 in stat week 31, with Deer Lake leading our projects in total catch with ~3,000 to date and ~7,000 overall for NSRAA. Once again the SSRAA Klawock Hatchery coho program is showing a great return this season with over 25,000 contributed to the troll fisheries so far. With such high coho prices this year I am hopeful that we will see a decent contribution from NSRAA to the troll fleet in the upcoming few weeks.
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