Aug 16th-Return Update

This past weekend chum trollers have blown the previous harvest number records including: total chum troll harvest, weekly troll harvest, and total chum value to the troll fleet. Through Tuesday trollers have harvested over 600k chum from Sitka sound and another 80k from West Crawfish Inlet and Crawfish Inlet. The ~700k so far this year eclipses last years record harvest of just under 600k troll caught NSRAA chum.  Last week (wk33) the trollers harvested a record 312k Sitka Sound chum. In all the total value to the troll fleet is now $5.9m. The recent poor weather seems to have reduced the catch rates for the troll fleet but there continues to be substantial effort in the Sitka Sound area with a moderate amount of effort in West Crawfish.  This past Sunday the Deep Inlet seine harvest was over 100k fish harvested. Gillnet catch at Deep Inlet this week has been on the slower side but there also an ever increasing number of gillnet boats participating in Deep Inlet. It is looking more and more likely that this will be the peak week for Deep Inlet chum returns and there is more wet/windy weather in the forecast which tends to push fish into the inlet.

Cost Recovery at Crawfish Inlet continues. Monday a cost recovery harvest of 265k lbs occurred and there will be continued harvest on Wednesday of this week.  Currently we are approximately 15% of the way through the cost recovery goal. Historically in Crawfish Inlet there has been a sharp increase in harvest this stat week. The last few days there has been an increase in cost recovery catch on the outer line of the SHA indicating larger numbers of chum are beginning to push into the inlet. Currently we are on track with the forecast for Crawfish Inlet but will need a substantial harvest by the end of this week to continue that trend. Last cost recovery sample from Crawfish Inlet was 72% male. Once cost recovery is complete Crawfish Inlet will open to common property seine harvest on the same daily schedule as Deep Inlet. Any seine opening in Crawfish Inlet will be announced with a 48 hour advance notice.