Our Blog
Sept 4th- Deep Inlet Update - We continue to assess chum recruitment into Bear Cove and are getting closer to our fall chum brood stock goal. Recruitment is steady but has slowed with the recent shift back to sunny weather. NSRAA will attempt to collect chum brood from the head of Deep Inlet this weekend in order to assure we have […]
August 27th-Deep Inlet Closure - The Deep Inlet THA will close to common property fishing on August 31st due to fall chum brood shortages at Medvejie Hatchery. Currently there is an estimated 40,000 chum brood in Bear Cove. To complete fall chum egg takes an additional 50,000 brood are needed. There has not been a meaningful increase in chum brood […]
August 21st-Return Update - Fall chum returns to Sitka Sound and the Deep Inlet THA have remained strong since reopening the THA this past Saturday. In the past two weeks over a million fall chum have been harvested between the Sitka Sound common property troll/seine fisheries and the Deep Inlet openings. This week the total Deep Inlet chum return […]
August 13 – Deep Inlet Re-Opening Announcement - Deep Inlet has met the Cost Recovery goal this season. Deep Inlet will reopen Saturday, August 15th, with Troll and will continue with the standard rotation. An ADFG announcement will be posted shortly.
August 11-Deep Inlet Cost Recovery Progress - Cost recovery in Deep Inlet on Saturday and Sunday made significant progress on cost recovery and currently 81% of the goal has been harvested. Cost recovery will resume Wednesday, August 12th. Due to the increase in cost recovery harvest it is likely that our goal will be achieved over the next two days. A reopening […]Sept 2-Return Update
Fall chum returns continue to taper after peaking over the past 2 weeks. Deep Inlet and Bear Cove returns are now a combined 112% of forecast and this week topped a total return of 2 million chum. The trollers continue on their record setting harvest and are now tantalizingly close to one million troll caught chum, between Deep Inlet and Crawfish Inlet returns, with a total of 970k chum harvested (820k DI & 150k CI). While the trollers have been in record setting territory for several weeks, breaking the million mark would be a historic milestone. Based upon the dwindling numbers of trollers participating in the fishery, breaking the million mark is seeming less likely with each passing day. Total commercial value of chum to the troll fleet is now over $8m. The total NSRAA commercial value to all gear in 2022 is going to be the 2nd highest on record. This year will top $20 million for the second time in the history of NSRAA. Only behind the 2018 record return to the Crawfish Inlet project. This years value is being driven by decent returns, but also more importantly, an increase in the price per pound being paid, primarily on chum, to the fishing fleet.
This past week we have wrapped up our chinook egg takes, those are now compete and all of our program goals have been met. The fall chum salmon egg take at Medvejie continues and we are currently at 25% of the 90m goal and are seeing a 50/50 male/female ratio at the hatchery. We are closely watching the Bear Cove recruitment and based upon current numbers still need an additional 20-30k additional brood stock chum. The numbers in Bear Cove continue to build and this rainy forecast will likely bring in additional recruitment from those Bear Cove bound fish still milling in Eastern Channel and Sitka Sound. We will assess chum numbers early next week in Bear Cove to determine if there is an adequate amount. IF there appears to be a shortfall, back up options will be developed. Most likely that would entail setting some fish aside in net pens in Crawfish Inlet as an insurance policy against any shortfall.
Over the last several weeks we have watched the Bear Cove chum numbers SLOWLY climb. Looking deeper into our otolith information it appears that this year there has been an interception rate of Bear Cove bound fish of~90%. This compares to the recent long-term average of 67%, with last year coming in at 77%. The high interception rate this year is what is currently driving our challenges with sufficient brood stock as 600k+ Bear Cove fish have been harvested. While it is still early, we are also becoming concerned if we will see this higher interception rate on our coho return. Very few have been seen in Bear Cove and the Deep Inlet coho return is looking extremely weak this year. Often when we have coho shortfalls at Bear Cove we will utilize Deep Inlet as a backup. With such a weak return to Deep Inlet there will likely be few available there.
Coho cost recovery has begun at Mist Cove and a little over 100k lbs has been harvested with a current sex ratio at 65% male in the cove. It appears we will have the best coho return in quite a few years to Deer Lake. A little over 20k have been harvested by the troll fleet and the catch is continuing. There are also early indications that the Hidden Falls coho return may see a similar uptick in survival and returns.
Aug 29th-Return Update
Cost recovery continues at Crawfish Inlet and we have approximately 42% left to harvest. We made good progress over Friday and Saturday at CI and harvested nearly 20% of the goal. The male sex ratio is holding high in the cost recovery samples and last sample taken from Saturdays harvest was 65% male. We have been seeing a high 3-year old percentage at CI and that is maintaining at 35% of the harvest in recent samples. We will continue cost recovery fishing at CI Monday (8/29) through Wednesday (8/31). It is very unlikely that there will be a Thursday seine opening for CI as the announcement would need to come out Tuesday morning. Daily progress is posted to our home page under the 2022 Fishing section.
Chum harvest at Deep Inlet is beginning to taper off and those sex ratios are now trending heavier female with the Friday (8/26) seine sample at 60% female. The troll effort for Sitka Sound has also tapered off substantially over the last few days. Though the troll effort has lessened, their catch this season is a historic record high in number of fish and total value. The total chum troll harvest for both Sitka Sound and Crawfish Inlet currently stands at 932k fish with a value of approximately 8.2 million. Of the 932k chum caught only about 140k have come from the Crawfish area. Unless the last of the die hard chum fisherman stick it out one more week, they will likely end the season just shy of 1m total catch.
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 catch rates for the troll fleet but there continues to be substantial effort in the Sitka Sound area with a moderate amount of effort in West Crawfish. This past Sunday the Deep Inlet seine harvest was over 100k fish harvested. Gillnet catch at Deep Inlet this week has been on the slower side but there also an ever increasing number of gillnet boats participating in Deep Inlet. It is looking more and more likely that this will be the peak week for Deep Inlet chum returns and there is more wet/windy weather in the forecast which tends to push fish into the inlet.
Cost Recovery at Crawfish Inlet continues. Monday a cost recovery harvest of 265k lbs occurred and there will be continued harvest on Wednesday of this week. Currently we are approximately 15% of the way through the cost recovery goal. Historically in Crawfish Inlet there has been a sharp increase in harvest this stat week. The last few days there has been an increase in cost recovery catch on the outer line of the SHA indicating larger numbers of chum are beginning to push into the inlet. Currently we are on track with the forecast for Crawfish Inlet but will need a substantial harvest by the end of this week to continue that trend. Last cost recovery sample from Crawfish Inlet was 72% male. Once cost recovery is complete Crawfish Inlet will open to common property seine harvest on the same daily schedule as Deep Inlet. Any seine opening in Crawfish Inlet will be announced with a 48 hour advance notice.
August 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 Sitka Sound have harvested over 200k chum and the stat week isn’t yet complete. There is every indication that the chum troll catch this season could be another record year.
While the chum troll catch at West Crawfish is not as impressive as the Sitka Sound troll harvest, we are still three times the catch for the same stat week as last year. It is estimated that over 20k will be harvested by the end of this week. There has been a fraction of the effort at West Crawfish with 10-15 boats daily fishing there compared to the 70 boats plus that have been fishing Sitka Sound. The poor weather coming in this weekend will likely push more effort to West Crawfish and we will likely see that catch pick up next week.
In addition to good early chum troll numbers in both Sitka Sound and West Crawfish, the catch per landing during the current week is ahead of last year. This indicates there is a large volume of chum in the region as typically the bite is better for the fleet during calm sunny conditions. We definitely have not had much of that weather recently. The current weather system will likely push some fish into Deep Inlet and we may start to see an increase in the net fleets harvest in Deep Inlet. It is hard to believe but the combined net harvest in Deep Inlet to date is 125k chum, which means the trollers have caught nearly double the catch of both net fleets. Eventually the large body will move into Deep Inlet but the current behavior of the fish is certainly working in the favor of the trollers.
While the fall chum return is just ramping up the summer return is rapidly winding down. On Thursday of this week staff completed the summer chum eggtake goal of 190 million eggs with the majority coming from Hidden Falls (170m), and the remainder from Gunnuk Creek and Medvejie Hatchery. The seine fleet was able to harvest over 130k chum returning to Hidden Falls this year. The highest net contribution since 2018. With a strong number of 3-year olds in the return this year it looks like next year will continue the trend of increasing survival rates from chum released at Hidden Falls. We also saw a similar number of 3-year olds in the SE Cove chum harvest this season. After an extremely slow and late start, the summer chum return turned out to beat our expectations. Let’s hope that trend continues with the fall chum return to Sitka Sound and Crawfish Inlet.
July 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 this week. Vast majority of our most recent Sitka Sound troll caught chum are age 4’s with a mix of 45% Bear Cove, 45% Deep Inlet, and 10% Crawfish Inlet bound fish. Sitka Sound/Eastern Channel chum troll catch is starting to look like it may be the largest troll harvest for this stat week in the history of Deep Inlet chum releases. With a projected 50k plus harvest this week alone. I anticipate that the timing of the summer troll closure, combined with the good Sitka Sound troll harvest rate, will translate to substantial effort over the weekend. We are updating our data pages frequently to provide the most current information, here is a link to the Deep Inlet page ( https://www.nsraa.org/?page_id=884 ).
Crawfish Inlet continues to be quiet, with no cost recovery effort or reported troll harvest. We will be taking a look at Crawfish Inlet this weekend with cost recovery and likely begin our Silver Bay brood stock management cost recovery early next week. We estimate around 10k fall chum brood have already made it back to Bear Cove, which is quite early for this large of a build. We will be performing a small harvest to collect sex ratio, and scale/otolith samples. This information is valuable to assist us in effectively managing the number of brood stock chum staging in Bear Cove. It is now clear that the fall chum return is early and/or going to be very large. Progression of catch over the next week will give us a better picture of the run strength but things are looking positive.
RSS - Posts
Recent Comments