Return Update-June 25th

NSRAA chinook returns have been picking up the past several weeks with a total estimated harvest in Stat Week 25 of 1,341 adults. The spring chinook fisheries in the Sitka area have harvested over 2,000 Medvejie chinook making up 47% of the Sitka Sound area commercial troll harvest. Currently the return is looking like it will come in over our our pre-season forecast of 13,900 and is pointing toward a 20,000 total chinook return. This year a larger portion of the return are 3 ocean chinook, more than we have seen in the past 3 years with those making up over 60% of the return to date.

Since the beginning of June the Deep Inlet chum fisheries have harvested a little over 18,000 fish through stat week 26. The early summer run chum is tracking just below our forecast for this date. The total early summer chum run forecast is 376,000. We have seen an over 9lb average weight since the start of the fisheries with only our most recent seine sample on the 21^st coming in below 9lbs. Interestingly we are seeing very large 4-year-old chum compared to the 5-year-olds with some samples having larger 4s than 5s. Five year olds have made up approximately 70% of the harvest to date with the remainder as 4-year-olds and most recent sample was 63% male. Reminder Deep Inlet will close to common property fishing at the end of the troll day this Saturday (June 27^th) to begin cost recovery operations, which will begin on Monday June 29^th. Deep Inlet will remain closed until our cost recovery goal is met.

Hidden Falls had its first opening this past Sunday with a harvest of 32,000 chum. This first opening was an encouraging harvest as we have a relatively small chum return forecast of 409,000. Similar to Deep Inlet we are seeing large fish at Hidden Falls, while not over 9lb like Deep Inlet, we did see a first opening average size of 8.7lbs. Surprisingly this large size was driven by the 4-year-old component coming in larger than the 5-year-olds. What is most confusing is that last year the 3-year-olds were some of if not the smallest on record for the site and this year based upon our first sample, the 4-year-old component from the same brood year is the largest 4-year-olds ever for Hidden Falls. First sample had a 60% 5-year-old component with the remaining 40% age four and 71% male. It will be interesting to see how this return progresses over the next few weeks.

The Point Agusta common property harvest from this past Sunday was sampled and no Hidden Falls otoliths were detected. The harvest was relatively small for the opening but was primarily DIPAC chum with a few Thomas Bay and SE Cove mixed in. NSRAA will be sampling the Friday Hawk Inlet and Saturday Point Gardner test fisheries and that information will be available early next week.

Cost Recovery at SE Cove will begin on June 29^th. Our initial plan was to begin harvest on July 1^st, but there are reports of chum beginning to build in the Special Harvest Area. A total chum return to SE Cove of 105,000 was forecast.