The big news this week is the tremendous success trollers targeting chum salmon in Sitka Sound are having. Effort and catch rates began increasing last week and have continued to increase this week. Last week trollers ended up harvesting over 70k chum salmon and are on track to potentially top 150k this week, with a combined harvest of approximately 200k chum so far this season. The 2021 season was a record chum harvest for trollers in Sitka Sound with just over 500k harvested. Last year through stat week 32 (current stat wk) trollers had harvested 17k chum. This year chum trollers in Sitka Sound have harvested over 200k chum and the stat week isn’t yet complete. There is every indication that the chum troll catch this season could be another record year.
While the chum troll catch at West Crawfish is not as impressive as the Sitka Sound troll harvest, we are still three times the catch for the same stat week as last year. It is estimated that over 20k will be harvested by the end of this week. There has been a fraction of the effort at West Crawfish with 10-15 boats daily fishing there compared to the 70 boats plus that have been fishing Sitka Sound. The poor weather coming in this weekend will likely push more effort to West Crawfish and we will likely see that catch pick up next week.
In addition to good early chum troll numbers in both Sitka Sound and West Crawfish, the catch per landing during the current week is ahead of last year. This indicates there is a large volume of chum in the region as typically the bite is better for the fleet during calm sunny conditions. We definitely have not had much of that weather recently. The current weather system will likely push some fish into Deep Inlet and we may start to see an increase in the net fleets harvest in Deep Inlet. It is hard to believe but the combined net harvest in Deep Inlet to date is 125k chum, which means the trollers have caught nearly double the catch of both net fleets. Eventually the large body will move into Deep Inlet but the current behavior of the fish is certainly working in the favor of the trollers.
While the fall chum return is just ramping up the summer return is rapidly winding down. On Thursday of this week staff completed the summer chum eggtake goal of 190 million eggs with the majority coming from Hidden Falls (170m), and the remainder from Gunnuk Creek and Medvejie Hatchery. The seine fleet was able to harvest over 130k chum returning to Hidden Falls this year. The highest net contribution since 2018. With a strong number of 3-year olds in the return this year it looks like next year will continue the trend of increasing survival rates from chum released at Hidden Falls. We also saw a similar number of 3-year olds in the SE Cove chum harvest this season. After an extremely slow and late start, the summer chum return turned out to beat our expectations. Let’s hope that trend continues with the fall chum return to Sitka Sound and Crawfish Inlet.
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