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Deep Inlet Notice
To Deep Inlet THA Fishery User Groups:
A reminder about boat traffic and anchoring near island homes in the Deep Inlet area.
Please review our plan:
Berry Island Resident Impact and Noise Reduction Plan
Sunday 8/22 Update
Cost recovery at Crawfish Inlet has gone very well the last few days and we are now at 60% complete. It is likely cost recovery will be complete Tuesday 8/24 and Crawfish Inlet will open to commercial seine Thur/Fri and mirror the Deep Inlet schedule the rest of the season. ADFG announcement will likely go out Tuesday afternoon. The last few days there has been a buildup in West Crawfish in Shamrock Bay and we have been performing cost recovery there as well. ADFG will look at buildup in West Crawfish next week and determine if a seine opening is warranted in West Crawfish as occurred last year.
Based upon observations at Bear Cove we now appear to have sufficient brood stock and will begin fall chum spawning next week. There continues to be large numbers of chum in Silver Bay from Entry Point to Bear Cove and troll harvest continues to be excellent from Silver Bay out past the Eckholms. It is almost certain that the NSRAA chum troll catch will break the 2013 record of 455k fish. Net fishing at Deep Inlet is going well but slower than would be anticipated by the adjacent troll harvest. The larger number of boats at Deep Inlet is also spreading out the catch reducing the per boat average. Based upon past fish behavior the chum will eventually stop biting for the trollers and push into Deep Inlet, question is when.
Friday 8/20 Update
What a difference a week makes. Chum returns to the Sitka area have improved greatly over the past week. We have seen our weekly catch numbers match our long-term average for Deep Inlet for stat week 33, and based upon current catch, this week at Deep Inlet may surpass the long-term average. Most recent Deep Inlet gillnet sample indicates 65% male and 63% 3-year olds. Troll catch continues to be excellent at both Deep Inlet and West Crawfish with a current catch rate of ~80k per week for the troll fleet at Deep Inlet/Eastern Channel alone. An additional 50k chum were caught last week in West Crawfish and similar numbers likely this week. Overall the fall chum troll catch has surpassed 300k fish and it is looking like it will top 400k before the troll catch drops off (455k highest DI NSRAA chum troll catch). On Thursday 8/20 there were an estimated 60-70 trollers working the drag from past the Eckholms to Entry Point in Eastern Channel and what appeared to be an excellent catch rate. With the good price this year for chum the troll commercial value is over $2m so far and currently leading the gear groups in total catch at Deep Inlet.
Crawfish Inlet cost recovery continues to go well. Today we are again fishing in the inlet with 2 boats and will continue Saturday with 4. Based upon observations we should be able to harvest over 1m pounds the next few days. If fishing continues to be this productive in Crawfish Inlet for cost recovery we will likely meet our goal early next week and potentially could have a common property seine opening on Thursday 8/26. Currently we are approximately 34% complete on cost recovery. Once Crawfish Inlet opens for seine we will mirror the Deep Inlet opening days/times at Crawfish Inlet to keep the fleet spread out.
After a dismal early summer chum return it is great to wrap up the year with a strong fall chum run.
Monday 8/16 Update
The Deep Inlet fall chum catch continued to be strong over the weekend with another good catch on Sunday by the seine fleet and the combined gillnet, seine, and troll catch for stat wk 33 is looking to be over 200k fish. The most recent seine samples from Fri and Sun show a drop in male ratio to ~50% male and an increase in the 3-year old percentage from the mid 30% range prior week to 65% 3-year olds, with age fours making up the remaining 35%. While the recent strong catches are good to see the rapid drop in 4-year olds is concerning and likely means the run will have a sharp drop off once the run has peaked, which based upon sex ratio, is likely this week. Let’s hope I am wrong but the age ratio is tracking very closely to last year and the run quickly petered out past the peak.
Troll catch and effort continues to be high in both the Sitka Sound/Eastern Channel area as well as West Crawfish. Today I would estimate over 50 trollers working the Deep Inlet area with an additional 18 in West Crawfish. Based upon the numbers of fish observed going over the rails today, daily averages continue to be high. In West Crawfish chum continue to move through the area with good show of fish from north of Cedar pass through to the Crawfish Inlet side of the pass. Cost recovery fishing in Crawfish Inlet today was very impressive with todays catch approaching 1 million pounds alone (last fished Friday for ~230k pounds). We will continue cost recovery fishing in Crawfish Inlet on Tuesday and likely every day at the head with the current strong recruitment.
The strong Deep Inlet chum catch, continued presence of large volumes in Sitka Sound/Eastern Channel and Silver Bay, greatly reduce our brood stock concerns for Medvejie. Current estimate in Bear Cove is 10k chum out of the 90k needed. There are widely distributed small schools in Silver Bay from Entry Point all the way to Bear Cove. With current water clarity it is hard to put a number on those fish making their way back to Medvejie but it appears to be substantial. We will continue to monitor recruitment to Bear Cove and provide regular updates on brood stock. Closure at Deep Inlet is not likely for next week and we are also evaluating options/logistics to secure brood at Crawfish Inlet in case of a shortage at Medvejie.
Deep Inlet update Fri 8/13
The fall chum catch in Deep Inlet has remained strong since the uptick in gillnet catch Monday morning through the Friday seine rotation. Initial indications are the gillnet catch will surpass 35k fish for M-W and the Th-F seine catch will almost certainly top 100k fish. There have been reports that Friday afternoon the seine catch had slowed but still is an impressive build from the extremely bleak stat week 32. The Tuesday 8/11 gillnet catch was 67% male with a 60% 4-year old component and 39% 3-year olds. We will be sampling the Th-F and Sun seine catch to see if the sex ration and age structure holds and will post that information Monday afternoon. Based upon this recent surge in catch and volume concerns for a brood stock closure have been greatly reduced. While I cannot eliminate the need for a brood stock closure, any potential closure it is anticipated would not happen until after the M-W gillnet opening of stat week 34 (8/25).
WK 32 Return Update
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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