The sockeye salmon run to Bristol Bay is just about over and that means that many fishermen are packing up and going home. Many of the Bay’s processors both large and small are working to wrap up the last of their fish and get their plants ready for the harsh Bristol Bay winter. With all that said there are still sockeye returning and there’s still quite a bit of fishing effort. The preseason forecast estimated the total run to the Bay this season at 33.8-million fish. That turned out to be low because the total return so far this season stands at 39.8-million and likely will exceed 40-million sockeye when it’s all said and done. That larger than expected run has produced a larger than expected commercial harvest. The preseason forecast called for a commercial harvest of 24-million sockeye but so far the Bay’s fishermen have harvested over 30.5-million fish. The system with the largest commercial harvest is Egegik where commercial fishermen have hauled in over 11.2-million sockeye. Next up would be the Naknek-Kvichak District, which has a total harvest of over 8.5-million sockeye. The district with the 3rd highest commercial catch is the Nushagak District, which has a total commercial harvest of 7.6-million sockeye. That puts the 2009 harvest in the Nushagak District as the 3rd largest in history surpassing the 7.4-million sockeye harvested in 1981. This year’s catch in the Nushagak District is only surpassed by the massive harvest of 8.4-million sockeye in 2007 and the monumental harvest of over 10.8-million in 2006. The total commercial harvest in the Ugashik District stands at over 2.6-million which is substantially higher than the preseason forecast of 1.5-million fish. One of the success stories in Bristol Bay this season is the King Salmon escapement to the Nushagak River. ADF&G’s goal was to get 75-thousand kings counted as escapement and the final count for this season is 81.4-thousand kings. Area Management Biologist Tim Sands can’t explain why the Nushagak King run has been stronger than other king runs across much of the state. He said, “Any time we make our escapement goals we are pleased. You can attribute it to the system we use of escapement based management. But there are obviously other things going on because many of the other systems in the State had met their escapement goals previously and then failed to meet them this year. It’s because there is something bigger going on that we don’t know about. It could have been just luck for the Nushagak kings. I’m pleased that there seems to have been enough kings to meet subsistence needs, our escapement needs and provide some opportunity for commercial harvest”. Any kings that are still moving about and headed up the Nushagak River will go uncounted because the sonar counter on the river has been pulled. Fish and Game has also pulled their counting towers on the Wood River and will likely pull their towers off the Igushik River later this week. While fishing is winding down across much of the Bay it’s still going relatively strong in the Togiak District. By regulation the District was closed over the weekend but on Monday the commercial harvest was 27-thousand kings, which puts the total harvest so far this year up to over 335.2-thousand sockeye. The Togiak District is a super-exclusive District, which means that fishermen in the District can’t transfer to other Districts and fishermen in other districts can’t transfer into the Togiak District. However, by regulation that restriction will be lifted this Friday and traditionally quite a few fishermen will transfer into the Togiak District at that time. However, Assistant Area Management Biologist Matt Jones noted that it’s unlikely that the District will be kept open over the weekend to accommodate those fishermen who transfer on Friday. He confirms that escapement to the Togiak River appears to be lagging. He said, “We thought we would be at about peak escapement time and we did have a couple of good days early to mid week last week. We had some 8 to 9-thousand escapement days but since then escapement has kind of fallen off from a couple of 5 thousand days to 2-thousand on Sunday. That puts us behind expected escapement levels. Looking ahead to the transfer period being waived on Friday its very unlikely that we will extend fishing there this upcoming weekend and so in actuality that transfer period wouldn’t be effective until Monday July 27th at 9-am. There is fishing in the western sections of the Togiak District that are rarely fished because most people realize that the fish are bound for the Togiak River and don’t fish west of there. So by regulation those sections are open until Saturday at 9-am”. Jones pointed out that the Togiak River section of the larger Togiak District closes at 9-am Friday per ADF&G regulations. Escapement to the Togiak River on Monday was 3.3-thousand and on Sunday it was 2.3-thousand. Total escapement to the Togiak River stands at over 81-thousand and the escapement goal for the River is 150-thousand sockeye. Informational updates and announcements regarding the Togiak District are available on the ADF&G Division of Commercial Fisheries Bristol Bay website or by calling (907)-2464636. At present every river system in Bristol Bay other than Togiak has met or exceeded their escapement goals and while effort has dropped off the Bay’s fishermen hauled in another 127.3-thousand sockeye on Monday. That’s on top of catches of 75-thousand on Sunday and 113-thousand on Saturday. On Monday there were an estimated 254-sockeye per delivery in the Ugashik District and 613 in the Egegik District. There were apparently 316 sockeye per delivery in the Naknek-Kvichak District on Monday and 248-sockeye per delivery in the Togiak District. On Monday there was just 66-sockeye per delivery in the Nushagak District. One of the topics that dominated the radio conversations between fishermen this season were the limits that were imposed on the fleet by many of the Bay’s processors beginning on June 28th. Those limits lasted through about July 6th or 7th though they varied from processor to processor and from tide to tide. The reason for the limits given by a few processors is that the large catches early in the season overwhelmed their processing capacity. Several processors like Trident and SnoPac have confirmed that their facilities were not up to 100-percent capacity early in the run largely due to the 2-week delay in getting the early season barges into Naknek and Dillingham, which was due to the late winter and icy conditions in the Bay. However, Izetta Chambers with Naknek Family Fisheries claims there is more to the limits story than just an early run that caught the processors off guard and not ready. She said, “From the fish mongers side there were a couple of days there were we had a big glut of fish all at once and I was on the phone with our distributors talking about prices and I noticed that just over that weekend we saw about a 50-cent decrease in price. And after that weekend, when we had all that fish, that’s when the canneries put the fishermen on limits. And that really annoyed me because coming from a fishing family we don’t like to be lied to and the canneries were saying they didn’t have the capacity to process the fish well it wasn’t even about the capacity. It was about the market for fresh fish tanking and yet they were telling the fishermen that we can’t take your fish because of capacity. I think that needs to be investigated. I see it as straight market manipulation. The consumers should be alerted to some of the predatory practices of these big canneries because it’s completely unfair to try and deny people economic opportunities in a region where a lot of people get a lot of their income from these 2 or 3 weeks during the season. To be put on these thousand pounds limits when the fish are really hitting is taking money out of people’s pockets”. Chambers hopes the legislature and perhaps the Attorney General’s office decides to take an interest in the limits issue and she also hopes it’s brought up when the Alaska Board of Fisheries next takes up Bristol Bay proposals in December. The preseason processing capacity survey that was put together by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game put the daily capacity to process fish in the Bay at 1.8-million fish, which was met or exceeded by the actual harvest on 3 separate days. The largest daily harvest in the Bay was 2-million sockeye on July 3rd. A look at the harvest information provided by Fish and Game shows that harvests exceeded a million fish a day from June 26th through July 9th. Currently the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is still counting escapement on the Ugashik River, The Igushik River, and the Togiak River. The counting towers have been pulled from the Egegik, Kvichak, Naknek, Alagnak, Wood and Igushik Rivers. At last report the total run was 38.8-million with a commercial harvest of 30.5-million sockeye.
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