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August 25th-Deep Inlet to reopen Tuesday August 26th - Cost recovery has been completed for Deep Inlet. The Deep Inlet THA will reopen starting Tuesday with the following rotation for this week(stat wk 35)-Tuesday-Troll, Wednesday-seine, Thur/Fri-gillnet, Saturday seine. Next week the Deep Inlet rotation will revert to the regular schedule of Sunday-seine, Mon-Wed-gillnet, Thur/Fri-seine and Saturday-troll. The ADFG announcement should be out shortly.
August 22-Deep Inlet Cost Recovery Progress Update - Based upon Friday morning Deep Inlet cost recovery progress, a Deep Inlet reopening announcement will not be issued at this time. At current harvest rates it is unlikely our cost recovery goal will be met by end of day Saturday. The next potential reopening announcement has been pushed back to Monday, August 25th and will […]
Return Update-August 19th - Deep Inlet Last week a total of 276,000 chum salmon returned to Deep Inlet. The majority of the harvest, 156,000, occurred in the pink salmon seine fishery in Eastern Channel. Troll harvest in Sitka Sounds also increased last week with approximately 60,000 chum harvested by 67 troll permit holders. An additional 35,000 chum were harvested […]Return Update-August 8th
Fall chum returns to Deep Inlet have begun this past week and are tracking along with our pre-season projections for the stat week. Gillnet harvest at Deep Inlet this past week was 25,000 chum and the seine chum harvest may top 100,000 by the end of harvest on Friday. Troll chum effort and catch increased this past week in Sitka Sound and approximately 15,000 have been harvested in stat week 32. There are reports that the troll chum catch dropped off in the last 24 hours with the change to rainy, windy, weather conditions in the sound. Total fall chum harvest for Deep Inlet for stat week 32 will likely be in the 150,000 fish range.
The Deep Inlet THA will remain open for troll through 11:59 p.m., August 9, at which time the THA will close to common property fishing for cost recovery. The Deep Inlet cost recovery harvest is currently 62% complete and cost recovery fishing will restart on Sunday, August 10th. Based upon fall chum run timing and run strength the THA may need to be closed for several weeks to fulfill the cost recovery goal. Once the cost recovery goal is complete the THA will reopen for common property fishing. NSRAA has projected a total return of 1.4 million fall chum to Deep Inlet.
Coho returns continue to be strong and above recent harvest averages for this date with Hidden Falls and Deer Lake leading the NSRAA coho projects. To date over 20,000 NSRAA coho have been harvested in troll and sport fisheries.
Return Update-August 1st
Return Update-August 1st
Returns this past week of summer run chum salmon have continued their decline after peaking in mid-July with all four return sites coming in under forecast. Both Hidden Falls and Thomas Bay will come in substantially under forecast. SE Cove will finish up approximately 20% under the pre-season forecast and finally the summer run Deep Inlet chum will end up being approximately 15% under forecast. While there will still be a few of the tail end of the summer run chum returning for the next week or so, all sites seem to be rapidly winding down.
Cost Recovery
With the diminishing summer chum returns there has been minor progress on cost recovery at Hidden Falls, Deep Inlet and SE Cove. Cost recovery will continue at Hidden Falls and SE Cove this weekend but no significant harvest is anticipated. Cost recovery chum harvest at Medvejie-Bear Cove Wednesday resulted in the first early indication of the fall chum run beginning to show up and made up 45% of the harvest. Cost recovery at Deep Inlet will continue after next week’s Deep Inlet opening for stat week 32.
Egg-takes
Chum egg-takes at Medvejie and Gunnuk Creek have been completed with all goals met. Hidden Falls will complete egg-takes over the weekend and have sufficient chum brood secured to meet all project goals. Chinook salmon have just begun to recruit up the ladder at Medvejie the last few days and we anticipate sufficient brood have been secured behind the barrier net. Chinook egg-takes should begin mid-August.
Coho
We continue to see a strong early season catch of NSRAA produced coho from all sites. Hidden Falls is coming in significantly better than recent years with nearly 6,000 harvested in the troll fishery to date. This early Hidden Falls coho troll harvest is the highest through stat week 30 than in the last 10 years. Deer Lake, Bear Cove and Deep Inlet coho runs are also performing better than most recent years through stat week 30. Overall NSRAA coho have contributed over 12,000 coho to the troll fishery through stat week 30.
Return Update-July 24th
This past week has seen a steep decline in returns to all NSRAA chum sites. This decline has been seen at Deep Inlet, Hidden Falls, SE Cove and Thomas Bay. Unfortunately this has created challenges making any significant progress on cost recovery. We continue to monitor the returns at the Terminal Harvest Areas and are sampling the relevant common property fisheries to determine if this is the end of the run or an extremely truncated tail end of the summer chum returns. The Chatham strait test fisheries continue to indicate an above average number of chum in the area but we are not seeing that correlate to any meaningful increase in chum numbers in the THA’s.
SE Cove
Wednesday of last week it became apparent that there was a large buildup of chum in the SE Cove THA beyond the capacity of the processor to effectively manage. NSRAA worked with multiple processors to harvest a significant amount of chum on Saturday July 19th. Additionally, a common property seine opening occurred on Sunday July 20th and approximately 85,000 chum were harvested. Since the Sunday seine opener there has been a small build of chum and the THA will open to gillnet tomorrow, Friday July 24th. After Friday the THA will again close until the remainder of cost recovery is completed. There continues to be high prevalence of SE Cove bound chum in the Kingsmill test fishery and SE Cove made up 54% on the 7/15 fishing date. We should have this week’s Kingsmill test fishery data available late Friday.
Hidden Falls
Last week Hidden Falls had a total return of approximately 350,000 fish and was the peak week for this year’s return. The weekly return was utilized for brood stock at 100,000 and with 250,000 utilized for cost recovery. Cost recovery efforts on Monday of this week was very poor with just over 100,000lbs harvested. Since Monday no additional cost recovery has occurred and there has been little buildup in Kasnyku Bay. Brood stock is at 80% secured and we will continue to monitor for cost recovery opportunities. Sunday’s area 112-16 chum sample indicated Hidden Falls returning chum made up 38% of sample. Area 112-11 along Catherine Island is open for seine today and we will be evaluating the volume and make up of that harvest to determine what may be still to come for Hidden Falls.
Deep Inlet
Returns to Deep Inlet and Bear Cove also drastically declined this week. Brood stock for Medvejie summer chum egg takes has been secured. Cost recovery efforts this week were disappointing after the significant progress made the last week. As with Hidden Falls last week was the peak week for summer chum return numbers to Deep Inlet and fish are not currently recruiting in any meaningful number to Deep Inlet.
Thomas Bay
As mentioned for all our other summer chum return sites, numbers harvested in Thomas Bay have declined from the previous week. Thomas Bay returns are now tracking below the low point of our pre-season forecast. Thomas Bay remains open to common property with limited effort due to volume of fish currently returning.
Coho
One potential bright spot in returns are the early season interception of NSRAA released coho. All NSRAA coho sites seem to be tracking ahead of recent years in numbers by this date. It is particularly encouraging to see the Hidden Falls coho currently leading the NSRAA produced portion of the sport and troll harvest with over 2,500 fish accounted for so far. Hidden Falls coho returns have been very poor for quite a few years and a strong return to the site would be great to see. For the Sitka area the Deep Inlet released portion of our coho production is also performing much better than recent years and harvest to date is 4 times the Bear Cove released coho group.
Return Update-July 17th
Return Update-July 17th
Summer chum returns this week continue to mostly track along our pre-season forecasts and progress continues on cost recovery alongside the initiation of chum egg-takes at Hidden Falls and Medvejie. Daily updates to cost recovery progress by harvest site are continuing and there is the anticipation that significant progress will be made on the Hidden Falls and SE Cove in the coming week.
We continue to sample the Point Augusta, Gardner and Kingsmill test fisheries. Both Garnder and Kingsmill continue to be significantly above the long-term average for chum salmon with Hidden Falls production making up the majority of the sample for Gardner and SE Cove making up the majority at Kingsmill. For this week’s Kingsmill sample Hidden Falls remained at 14% of sample with SE Cove making up the relative majority at 49% of catch. Gardner will be fished Friday this week. For detailed breakdown see our Test Fisheries page.
Hidden Falls
Chum egg-takes began at Hidden Falls on July 14th and we have taken 28 million eggs so far, averaging nearly 1 million a day. Broodstock movement in the bay and up the ladder remains strong and we estimate that 65% of the brood needed is secured. Cost recovery for Hidden Falls is currently at 33% of goal and we expect a large cost recovery harvest on Friday. As we have secured a majority of the chum brood needed we can be more aggressive with cost recovery efforts closer to the barrier net in Kasnyku Bay and should make quicker progress on the cost recovery volume.
Medvejie
Summer chum egg-takes began at Medvejie on July 15th and egg-takes have been going very smoothly with 25% of the egg-take goal complete. There is more than sufficient chum brood in Bear Cove and so far we have taken 86k chum for cost recovery. We will continue cost recovery in Bear Cove and Deep Inlet Friday and are currently at 41% of goal.
Chinook salmon continue to enter Bear Cove and total return to date on Chinook looks to be the best in a decade with over 15k fish already accounted for. We have secured our brood needed and have sold over 3k adults for cost recovery with more still to come in Bear cove.
Other Sites
Thomas Bay has slowly begun to ramp up with 31k fish harvested to date. It is looking like Thomas Bay return is either going to be late or below forecast. We do continue to see small numbers in the test fisheries so there is still some potential to make our forecast. At SE Cove we expect a large cost recovery harvest over the next week and may quickly meet our total goal. There has been no harvest since Saturday as the processor has had capacity and tender/harvest boat availability issues. We have been assured by the processor that there will be sufficient capacity in place for a strong harvest Friday/Saturday and Mon-Wed next week. Stayed tuned to our home page for progress as potential reopening schedule could be announced next week. To date there has been no effort at Crawfish Inlet.
Return Update-July 8th
This past week common property openings for chum salmon wrapped up at Hidden Falls and SE Cove. These were the last openings until cost recovery is complete at each of the sites. Hidden Falls had a total chum harvest of 156k for stat week 27 and an additional harvest of 75k for Sunday June 6th. SE Cove closed out stat week 27 with a weekly harvest of 52k chum. Returns to Hidden falls is tracking right on our point forecast through stat week 27 with SE Cove beginning to outpace our forecast and is beginning to indicate that it will exceed our point forecast of 587k chum for the season.
Openings for chum at Thomas Bay continue to have minimal effort and minimal harvest though there was a slight uptick in harvest this past Sunday. Thomas Bay is currently lagging behind in our forecast for this date. Crawfish Inlet THA opened for common property this past Sunday but there was no recorded effort. Crawfish Inlet will remain open for common property troll and seine through July 26th at which time it will close for cost recovery.
Cost Recovery
Cost recovery on chum salmon is now ongoing at Deep Inlet, Hidden Falls and SE Cove. Through today, July 8th, Deep Inlet is at 21% of goal and has been progressing steadily with near daily effort and multiple boats participating in harvest. Hidden Falls cost recovery began Monday July 7th and so far is off to a slow start without much additional recruitment following the Sunday seine opening and has only managed to harvest a few percent of the goal so far. SE Cove cost recovery also began on Monday July 7th and is off to a better start and we have harvested 12% of that goal through today. We continue to update daily our homepage cost recovery progress bars and is the quickest way to see progress at all of the sites.
Test Fisheries
NSRAA continues to sample chum harvest in the Point Augusta, Hawk Inlet, Point Gardner and Kingsmill test fisheries. Data from our chum samples indicate that the Hidden Falls and Thomas Bay portion is continuing to increase with SE Cove remaining relatively stable. Harvest volume at all locations is significantly above the 10-year average for chum. Link to data is available here: NSRAA Test Fishery Data Page
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