Aug 4th Return Update

Today Hidden Falls completed their chum egg take with a total of 265k fish through the hatchery and a total of 210 million eggs taken making this the largest ever chum egg take at Hidden Falls. This record number assures all existing summer stock chum programs will have their full complement of green eggs going into incubation. This number includes an additional 40 million chum that will be incubated at Hidden Falls and released at Takatz, in the Hidden Falls THA, next spring. This new production is the result of collaboration with Armstrong Keta and are being released on their behalf. Egg takes were also wrapped up on summer chum yesterday at Gunnuk Creek and Medvejie. At Medvejie we have had a record number of summer chum returning to Bear Cove and to date have processed over 40k adults with more summer chum 3-year olds still arriving.

Initial fall chum otolith samples taken this week in the Sitka Sound troll fishery indicate that 17% of the harvest this week outside of Deep Inlet are still summer stock 3-year old chum. We have seen a record number of 3-year old summer stock chum this season at Deep Inlet and Hidden Falls. While it is still too early to forecast next years summer chum return, we are confident that it will be very strong for both Deep Inlet and Hidden Falls. The initial otolith samples this week also indicate that our forecast for Bear Cove bound 4-year old fall chum may be accurate and continues to give concern on making our brood stock needs at the hatchery. These samples also give an early indication that the Deep Inlet bound chum 4-year old’s are out performing the high end of our forecast. While this is great news for fishermen and potential brood needs, a closure of Deep Inlet still appears necessary for the net fleets beginning on Aug 20th. Additionally, if the Bear Cove bound portion of the fall chum run continue to track forecast we will request ADFG not allow chum retention in Sitka Sound during the summer coho closure next week. We are obtaining additional otolith samples from this weekends seine fishery and Sitka Sound troll deliveries to inform that decision. There will still be chum troll opportunity during the closure in the West Crawfish area.

Cost recovery at SE Cove is pretty much wrapped up. We will be making one last effort there this coming Sunday/Monday in order to clean up what remains but harvest will likely be less than 200k lbs. Currently we are at 51% of our SE Cove goal.

While both size and price of chum salmon this season is disappointing, both things we have no control over, as fishermen and an organization that depends upon being optimistic for the future, next year is looking like there will be great chum return numbers.