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...
Read MoreAugust 5-Return Update
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...
Read MoreJuly 29th-Return Update
Chum returns to our inside summer sites appears to have peaked and is beginning to wind down. Catches this week will likely be about half of last week at Thomas Bay, SE Cove and Hidden Falls but all are on track to meet or exceed our pre-season forecast. A first for the inside sites in many years. While the summer chum return to Deep Inlet is winding down, the fall chum return continues to show strong early numbers. The Deep Inlet net catches for chum last week quadrupled from week prior with an 80% male sex ratio on seine, gillnet and troll samples and are track to at least double again...
Read MoreJuly 22-Return Update
Returns this past week for summer chum salmon continue to increase to all our release sites. Yesterday (Thursday) there was the first opening at Hidden Falls for chum in several years. It appears the 2022 chum return to Hidden Falls will be the best since 2018. We continue to see a high proportion of Hidden Falls chum in the Point Augusta common property openings as well as the ADFG Point Gardner test fishing efforts. The last Point Gardner test fishing, on July 19th, continues to be above the long-term average for this time of year. SE Cove also continues to see a steady harvest of chum...
Read MoreJuly 15th-Return Update
This past week we have seen a large increase in chum harvest at all of our inside summer chum sites. This is very encouraging as up until this past week the chum catch had been substantially below forecast. Both SE Cove and Thomas Bay had a dramatic increase in catch this past week with more than a doubling of numbers and effort. On Tuesday we performed the 4th weekly Hidden Falls test fishing and saw a dramatic change from prior weeks with an average catch of 13,000lbs per set. Our current estimate is 10k adult chum inside the barrier net and we will begin spawning on Monday of next week....
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