Returns through week 32 for fall chum salmon continued to be weak to Deep Inlet despite significant troll interception in the Sitka Sound troll fishery totaling 57k fish in week 32. With the change in weather over the past weekend some of the volume in Sitka Sound has begun to make it into Deep Inlet and the gillnet fleet. The gillnet fishery is still ongoing today but there has been a significant increase in the catch from last week starting Monday and continuing through today (Wednesday) and by far will be the largest weekly gillnet catch of the season. Additionally another 23k troll caught chum have been harvested so far in stat WK 33. This is very encouraging news as it was beginning to look like the fall run was going to be a bust.
While the chum trolling at West Crawfish and Crawfish Inlet has not been as impressive as Sitka Sound trollers did manage to harvest a total of 3,500 in week 32 and 2,300 so far in week 33. On Wednesday there were 15 trollers working West Crawfish and the Cedar pass area with several more on the way. There are also signs chum are beginning to move into the Crawfish Inlet SHA from both Cedar Pass and Walker Channel. Our chum cost recovery effort at the head of Crawfish Inlet on Sunday the 8th was poor with only a 20k lb catch. Today there appeared to be approximately 10-12k chum at the head of the inlet with small scattered schools near the head and around the net pen storage site. Scattered jumps also at the outer SHA line. I anticipate that we will see a large push of fish into the inlet over the next several days and the large rain event forecast for tomorrow and Friday. We will have two boats for cost recovery on Friday (8/13) working in the Crawfish Inlet SHA.
On Monday this week we completed our summer chum egg takes and have reached our egg take goals for all summer chum run projects. Monday Hidden Falls took an additional 2.5 million summer chum eggs for Gunnuk Creek Hatchery and had approximately 6k chum surplus. With summer chum egg takes complete Hidden Falls will begin to recruit chinook with egg takes likely to occur next week. Medvejie will also begin chinook egg takes next week and looks to have plenty of brood stock on hand.
We will continue to monitor fall chum returns and will have an update on any potential Deep Inlet closure on Monday 8/11. Let’s hope the chum continue to move in and this is the front portion of the fall chum run.
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