Our Blog
Support Alaska Hatcheries at Board of Fisheries - Alaska Board of Fisheries Proposals. Your voice is needed. The board of fisheries will take up three hatchery proposals at the statewide meeting. Proposals 170, 171, and 172 seek to impose broad, preemptive reductions or moratoria on Alaska’s private nonprofit (PNP) salmon hatchery program without demonstrating a causal link between hatchery production and the specific […]
NSRAA Scholarship Reminder - Each year NSRAA awards three $2500 scholarships. Applications are due soon – check it out! Scholarships
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 […]2016 Planning: Deep Inlet, Hidden Falls, Southeast Cove
Fishing Schedules for Deep Inlet and Hidden Falls chum fisheries were finalized at the spring Board of Directors Meeting. Several documents have been posted on our website – both on the opening page and the FrontPage.
Information includes:
- Hidden Falls chum: forecast, fishing schedule (calendar), broodstock collection timing, Assessment Area Map. The assessment rate has been set at $0.10 per pound, pending state approval.
- Deep Inlet chum: forecast, fishing schedule (calendars), cost recovery and broodstock collection plan, SHA Map (Special Harvest Area = cost recovery fishing areas). Please note that given the 2016 cost recovery goal, there is a high likelihood of a Deep Inlet closure this season. This would occur in August, most likely some time during weeks 33-35 (August 7-27) and might last for 10 days or so depending on return strength and fish behavior. We plan to conduct as much of the harvest outside the THA as possible to minimize closure time.
Also of note this season is the first 4-year-old chum return to Southeast Cove. Although somewhat hard to predict with little historical data, our forecast is 166,000 fish, with a range of 83,000-248,000. Both the 3- and 4-year-olds returning this year were reared as 4.0 gram fry. Fishing in the THA will be restricted to cost recovery fishing this season.
Our other new chum project at Crawfish Inlet is in its second year of fry rearing. The first sizeable return there (4-year-olds from the initial 2015 fry release) will be in 2018. These fry were also reared as 4.0 gram fry.
NSRAA Spring Board Meeting : March 2-3 in Sitka
NSRAA’s 2016 Spring Board of Directors Meeting will be held on Wednesday & Thursday, March 2-3, 2016 in Sitka in the NSRAA Board Room. Meetings begin at 9 am each day. The public is invited to attend.
Topics will include NSRAA’s FY17 Budget, planning for the 2016 season and beyond, program updates and review of recent Board of Fish actions. To view the agenda, the full board book and staff presentations, visit our Board Info page.
NSRAA 2016 Salmon Forecast
Here’s a preliminary look at our 2016 forecast. We’ll see the first 4-year-olds return to our Southeast Cove program.
Hidden Falls August 5
Eggs taken through August 5 is 138 million; goal is 180 million. It appears there are another 20,000 fish so we expect to get to 160 million for sure, perhaps 170 million. DIPAC is on standby to take the balance as needed.
Hidden Falls Broodstock
Hidden Falls eggtakes are continuing at a good pace but it appears there will not be enough broodstock to meet the 180 million egg goal. Currently we have 115 million eggs (August 3) and on that same day coincidentally we had our largest eggtake of the season (12 million). The estimated number of chum being held is about 30,000 which should result in 30 million eggs. We have requested 20 million eggs from DIPAC and another 10 million from AKI. If these requests come through we expect to have 175 million eggs.
The distribution of these fry next spring will approximate 55 million at Kasnyku Bay, 45 million at Takatz, 24 million at Deep Inlet, and 50 million at Southeast Cove.
Currently the harvest of adult Hidden Falls stock chum at Deep Inlet is 650,000. An additional 50,000 catch is attributed to the fall stock (Medvejie) which should be building this next week.
RSS - Posts
Recent Comments