The NSRAA Executive Committee met on Friday Aug 2 to discuss current Deep Inlet cost recovery progress and to develop a tentative Deep Inlet re-opening schedule. Barring unforeseen lack of progress on cost recovery this coming week Deep Inlet will re-open on Saturday Aug 10th to Troll. In order to equalize the 1:1 required net ratio for the Deep Inlet gillnet/seine rotation the following fishing schedule will occur for Stat Week 32 into Stat Week 33.
Sat Aug 10th Troll, Sun-Mon Aug 11th-12th Seine, Tue-Wed Aug 13th-14th gillnet. After August 14th the weekly Deep Inlet rotation will return to the pre-closure daily schedule.
The fall chum salmon return to Deep Inlet continues to have record troll harvest and combined with the Thursday Aug 1 seine pink salmon opening in Sitka Sound indicates a large abundance of chum have moved into Eastern Channel and the near shore Sitka Sound Area. The troll fleet has now harvested nearly 200k chum in the last 12 days. Two record weeks for troll harvest in a row for the stat weeks. Last weeks total has been revised upward to 77k and the total for this stat week is already at 100k with several days to go. It appears the main body of chum have moved further into the outer Deep Inlet THA area and into Eastern Channel. The seine harvest for yesterdays pink opening in the sound was 100k pink salmon and 70k chum salmon. Based upon this large body of fish moving in we anticipate being able to make substantial cost recovery progress over the next week.
The fall chum return to Crawfish Inlet has also recently moved in and cost recovery has begun in Crawfish Inlet. There are also some chum in West Crawfish at this point in time but there has been little troll effort in West Crawfish due to better fishing in the Sitka Sound area. It is anticipated that most of the return to Crawfish Inlet will go to cost recovery if the return comes in at our pre-season forecast of 1.3 million chum salmon. There may be seine opportunity late in the season if return comes in at or above our pre-season forecast.
Yesterday we completed our summer chum egg take goals at Hidden Falls and Medvejie. Hidden Falls will be closed to common property seine fishing for the remainder of the season. The few remaining summer chum to return to Hidden Falls will be taken for cost recovery to reduce the deficit of the cost recovery goal at SE Cove/Gunnuk Creek. We had anticipated a majority of the SE Cove/Gunnuk Creek cost recovery would come from Gunnuk Creek and that is the only location to come in significantly under forecast and will likely end up less than half of forecast.
Total chum returns to date has now topped 3.5 million.
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