Togiak Seafood’s is Up and Running

The 2009 Bristol Bay sockeye salmon run came in larger than expected, produced harvests exceeding almost all expectations, and is not quite over. The total run to the Bay has officially exceeded 40-million and the total commercial catch has topped 30.7-million sockeye. Another17.8-thousand sockeye were counted as escapement on Thursday, which puts total escapement for the season up to 9.3-million. However, Fish and Game is only counting escapement on the Togiak and Igushik Rivers because the counting towers on all of the other river systems have been pulled. According to the latest numbers every river system in Bristol Bay has either met or exceeded their pre-season escapement goals including the Togiak River, which on Thursday topped the lower it of its escapement goal. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game issued an emergency order Thursday afternoon extending fishing time in the Togiak River section of the Togiak District until 9-am Sunday morning, which diverts from the normal schedule. The entire Togiak District will then reopen at 9-am on Monday. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is restricted in the amount of extra fishing time they can allow. Assistant Area Management Biologist Matt Jones confirms that the department can only extend fishing time by 48-hours thus the opening in the Togiak River section through 9-am Sunday morning. Escapement to the Togiak River has picked up in recent days, which was evidenced by the 24-thousand fish spotted on Wednesday at the counting towers set up on the Togiak River. Another 29-thousand sockeye were counted as escapement on Thursday. Total escapement for the season is well over 130-tousand and the escapement goal is between 120 to 270-thousand sockeye. On Thursday fishermen in the Togiak District hauled in 39-thousand sockeye, which puts the total harvest for the season well over 370-thousand fish. ADF&G’s Matt Jones confirms that effective Friday morning fishermen who have fished in other Districts in Bristol Bay could transfer without delay into the Togiak District. Most of the concentrated fishing effort in the Togiak District occurs in Togiak Bay and Jones sounded optimistic about the size of the run and the ability of fishermen to continue harvesting sockeye. He said, “I’d say all signs point to an average to above average run right now. I expect good fishing at least through next week and maybe into August we could see more good fishing by Togiak standards”. Fish and Game is advising fishermen to listen for an announcement next week that may make adjustments to the scheduled fishing periods. Announcements can be heard on KDLG am 670 at 6-minutes past the hours of 9-am, 12-noon, 3-pm, 6-pm and 9-pm. Informational updates and announcements are also available by calling the info line at 246-4636. At noon Thursday ADF&G issued another emergency order that extends commercial fishing in the Naknek-Kvichak, Egegik and Ugashik Districts with both set and drift gear through 9-am Monday morning.

A major high-end salmon processor has partnered with a small Bristol Bay community to create the newest company to join the wide array of fish processors that do business in Bristol Bay. Copper River Seafood’s has put up $2-million dollars and the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation has matched that $2-million dollars in and effort to create a new company called Togiak Seafood’s. Actually BBEDC’s share of the money was given to the Traditional Council of Togiak, which is one of its member’s. That makes the new company a 50-50 partnership between the Council and Cooper River Seafood’s. The ultimate goal is to refurbish an existing building in the city of Togiak for use as a processing plant but the facility is not ready this season. But that’s not stopping the new company from buying Togiak fish. Instead of processing the fish in Togiak the company is icing the fish down and quickly flying them to the Copper River Seafood’s processing facility near downtown Anchorage. Joe Egemo is the Chief Operations Officer for Copper River Seafood’s and he claims fishing has started to pick up in the last 10-days in Togiak Bay. Egemo said, “We are starting to get the volumes we need and we have been keeping our Hercules aircraft full, which haul out 42-thousand pounds per hop out of Togiak back to Anchorage”. The plan is for Togiak Seafood’s to continue buying sockeye, coho, kings, and chums through about mid-September and the company is paying a dollar a pound for kings and sockeye delivered to their dock and 95-cents for fish that that are tendered. The price for chums is 20-cents. However, the company is only buying chilled and bled fish. The fish being delivered to Togiak Seafood’s is not destined for a can nor is it headed and gutted. Rather it will be processed into fillets and make its way to the fresh salmon markets in the lower 48-states. In 2010 the company hopes to have their processing facility in the city of Togiak up and running with both fillet and H&G lines that will be manned by local Togiak area residents. Jonathan Forsling is the Traditional Council of Togiak’s representative on the management team for the new company. He believes a processing plant in the city of Togiak has the potential to greatly improve the local economy. He said, “Our main goal is to stimulate the economy by creating jobs here in Togiak as well as bringing the price up for fishermen and having jobs available throughout our more of the season”. Forsling says slowly but surely many of the local Togiak area fishermen have begun to accept the new company and adapt to the new chilling and bleeding requirements. He said, “This is actually the first year that the icing and bleeding program has really begun to take off and with everything it just takes time for the fishermen to get used to the extra time it takes to bleed a fish and the extra time it takes to put them on ice”. Copper River Seafood’s monetary investment into Togiak Seafood’s is around $2-million dollars but Egemo noted that the investment is much larger when you take into consideration the operational knowledge that has been brought into the community. As an example he cited the city owned 10-ton ice making plant which sat unused and broken for years until some engineers with Copper River Seafood’s got it up and running. The Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association put up over $7-thousand dollars to get the ice-machine back up and running and the organization’s Executive Director took a tour around Togiak Seafood’s operations on Thursday. Bob Waldrop said, “I couldn’t be happier than I am right now to see what Cooper River Seafood’s and the Traditional Council of Togiak has done over here. It’s pretty phenomenal and we are very proud to have played a small part in attracting extra processing capacity to the Togiak area”. All of the players in Togiak Seafood’s agree that the venture would not have gotten off the ground without the financial support of the BBEDC. Robin Samuelsson Junior is the BBEDC President and C-E-O and he got his first chance on Thursday morning to see the Togiak Seafood’s operation. He believes the investment helps BBEDC further fulfill its mission to promote economic growth and opportunities for residents of its member communities. He said, “We’ll it’s important for the competition. Togiak Fisheries has been on limits with fishermen before. The fishermen are getting a real good price. The product is iced and it’s going out of Togiak as a number one product and that’s what it’s all about”. Togiak Seafood’s is not the only processor buying fish out of the Togiak District. On the other side of Togiak Bay is a processing facility known as Togiak Fisheries, which has been operating for years. That facility is owned and operated by North Pacific Seafood’s, which is based in Seattle. It’s anticipated that some of the other processors in the Bay will be participating in the small Togiak fishery by sending tenders over to Togiak Bay now that the transfer restriction has been lifted. While Togiak Seafood’s might be the newest processor in the Togiak area there was a surprise entrant on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. Coastal Villages Seafood’s, which is part of the C-D-Q group Coastal Villages Region Fund, sent a tender into Togiak Bay to buy fish to process at their new multi-million dollar processing plant in Platinum. Stuart Currie is the General Manager for Coastal Villages Seafood’s and he confirms that the new plant has been processing fish since around June 22nd. He noted that the company decided to buy fish from Togiak due to the short 15 hour running time for their tender back to the plant in Platinum. He said, “We are kind of at a slow point and are between fisheries in the Kuskokwim region. So our plant is not being used to full capacity right now so we thought we would come to Togiak and see what it looks like over here. This is a little bit of an adventure for us”. The new processing plant in Platinum was not cheap. It was built from the ground up at a cost somewhere around $35-million dollars. Stuart Currie claimed the plant has been buying fish from a fleet of around 200 salmon fishermen who might not otherwise have a commercial market in the Goodnews and Kuskokwim areas. The new processing plant employs about 250 people and Currie stated that perhaps as many as 90-percent of those are local area residents. Currie was unsure if the companies tender would return to Togiak once it was full and made the 15 hour run back to Platinum.

F/V Lady Patricia Helps to Improve Quality

Over the past few years many fishing organizations, processors and individual fishermen have been stressing quality as one of the quickest ways to improve the price paid to fishermen for their sockeye salmon. There are a number of ways to improve quality including quicker delivery times, better handling practices and chilling the fish from harvest through processing. One of the companies paying a premium for quality fish this season is Snopac Products headed by President Greg Blakey. He points to the company’s internal efforts to better inform the fleet on how to increase the quality of their harvested fish. He said, “We have some boats that are doing an absolutely fantastic job and we actually took one of the local boats here, that has done a consistently great job for the last couple of years, and we sent out a videographer to take some videos of their process and how they work their holds and how they get their fish so nice and cold. What we would like to do is develop a training video to take some of the guess work out of it for people that are new to slush icing”. The vessel chosen for the project was the Lady Patricia run by Vern and Patricia Carscallen from Dillingham. Patricia Carscallen noted that in many respects producing high quality sockeye is more attitude than procedure. She said, “You have to have the mindset that you want to produce quality fish and Greg makes it a little easier in that he appreciates it and he compensates us fairly well for good fish. The ice bonus with Snopac is significant. So that makes you feel like you are getting rewarded for what you are doing”. The price for a pound of sockeye varies widely this season from processor to processor and many of the major processors are not commenting on their price. That includes Peter Pan and Trident. However, Snopac Products announced that they are paying 86-cents a pound with a 5-cent bonus for participating in their bleeding program. However, the fleet that fishes for Snopac either has R-S-W capability or uses slush ice to chill down the sockeye. Greg Blakey hoped to have the D-V-D outlining good handling and chilling practices ready for their fleet to look at in advance of the 2010 sockeye season.

30 Million Headed towards 31 Million

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.

Proposed Fish Refuge for Bristol Bay

When the Alaska Board of Fisheries next takes up proposals related to Bristol Bay they will have to address some very controversial proposals ranging from eliminating the 32 foot length limit for drift vessels to requiring set-net operators to remove their gear during closed periods. One of the proposals sure to provoke some comments and testimony is number 13. It basically asks the Board of Fisheries to support the concept of establishing a fish refuge in Bristol Bay. Many times in the proposal the authors reference the proposed Jay Hammond State Game Refuge. That refuge was the subject of a bill introduced to the State Legislature a couple of years ago by State Senator Gary Stevens from Kodiak. It was referred to the Senate Resources committee and never heard from again. What the authors of proposal 13 want is a refuge that would augment the protection of fish habitat in the Kvichak and Nushagak River drainages. At the heart of the proposal are concerns that the proposed Pebble Mine or other such mines in the area would have a negative impact on the salmon resource that has made Bristol Bay famous. One of the proposals sponsors is Norm Van Vactor, who’s the plant manager for the Leader Creek Fisheries facility in Naknek. He said, “We are at the conclusion of the 2009 sockeye salmon run and once again Mother Nature has demonstrated what a tremendous and rich resource we have available to us. The question that one just needs to ask is why put that at risk. It has provided for the people of this region and elsewhere a wonderful protein source for hundreds of thousands of years and if properly managed and taken care of it will continue to do that. We have an awful lot going for us and we think that should be maintained and protected. One of the wonderful treasures of the world should not be put in jeopardy”. When proposal 13 hits the table during the December Board of Fisheries meeting it will not be the first time such a proposal has been brought up. In March of 2007 a proposal to create a fish refuge encompassing the Nushagak and Kvichak River Drainages was before the Board but at that time they chose to take no action on the proposal. Another sponsor of proposal 13 is Izetta Chambers, who’s the managing member of Naknek Family Fisheries. She agrees that hard rock mining is the number 1 threat to the salmon resource in the Kvichak and Nushagak River Drainages. Chambers believes that out-going Alaska Governor Sara Palin has flopped on her promise to protect Bristol Bay. During an interview Monday morning she said, “I think she was disingenuous when she came out and said she would not sacrifice one resource for another because that’s effectively what she has advocated. When she was on campaign trail with Senator McCain there were several rallies when she said drill baby drill and mine baby mine. I never heard her say lets protect our fish. I think she lied to the Alaskan people”. Other sponsors of proposal 13 include the Alaska Sportsman’s Lodge and the Curyung Tribal Council. The Alaska Board of Fisheries Bristol Bay meeting will be held in Anchorage from December 1st through the 8th though many Bristol Bay residents are still confident they can get the meeting moved to a location in either Naknek or Dillingham. The deadline to comment on proposals is November 17th. You can find all of the proposals submitted to the Board of Fisheries on the Alaska Department of Fish and Game website.

Nushagak District Salmon Run is Among the Best Ever

While the Egegik District might have paced the commercial fishery in Bristol Bay early in the season the other 2 major districts also did very well and reached all of their preseason escapement goals. In the Nushagak District the total run is over 9.7-million sockeye salmon and it might approach 10-million once it’s all said and done. The commercial harvest currently stands well in excess of 7.5-million. Tim Sands is the Area Management Biologist for the Nushagak District and he noted that the size of the run and the timing of the run turned many of his decisions regarding fishing time into easy decisions. He said, “The hardest part of the whole deal is figuring out when to start and how to start and making sure that you don’t wait to long. You want to wait as long as you can wait especially in a year like this year when the king escapement is lagging early but you have to be on top of things because if you miss a tide it could mean 2 or 3 hundred thousand more fish up river than you want. The biggest decision I feel like we made was extending the fishery on the 3rd of July when we extended the period from 9 o’clock that night until 9 o’clock the next morning. Even though a lot of boats had to stop fishing due to limits that was the biggest push of fish that we saw and if we didn’t extend the period it probably would have resulted in 2 or 3 hundred thousand more fish up the Wood River and we had enough fish up there already”. The forecasted run of sockeye salmon to the Nushagak District was 8.9-million and the actual of the size of the run is will in excess of 9.7-million fish. The preseason forecast called for a potential commercial harvest of 6.8-million sockeye while the actual harvest is over 7.5-million. Sands says another component of his decision making process is to try and get diversified escapement to the rivers in the Nushagak District. He said, “We want escapement from all parts of the run and we want harvest from all parts of the run. While some people would say get your entire escapement and then open it up continuously. But you’re going to leak fish when you fish continuously and biologically that’s just unsound. Even though we don’t have research showing its one way or the other there is the possibility that the fish that come in early represent different stocks and go to different areas verses the fish that come in later. We don’t think its super segregated like that but you still want escapement from all parts of the run”. The river system that drives the Nushagak District is the Wood River which has a sockeye escapement of over 1.2-million fish. The escapement goal was between 700-thousand to 1.5-million with a midpoint range of 1.1-million. The one system that did see some over-escapement this season was the Igushik River which has an escapement total of over 445-thousand sockeye. The escapement goal was between 150 to 300-thousand fish. Escapement to the Nushagak River stands at over 479-thousand sockeye which puts escapement well within the goal of between 340 to 760-thousand sockeye. Sands was happy that the Nushagak District lived up to his preseason hopes. He said, “How can it not with the 3rd largest harvest in the history of this district. We met all of our escapement and provided plenty of fishing time. I could never have hoped for a run this strong. I can not believe how fortunate we have been in this district over the last 7 seasons with the tremendous runs we have had here”. Next up for Sands and his staff are spawn surveys, preparing the 2009 season summary and writing comments for the proposals that will be before the Board of Fisheries in December. There are a number of proposals that deal directly with the Nushagak District including Proposal 40 put forward by Fritz Johnson from Dillingham to delete the sunset clause for the dude fishing regulations. Those regulations are currently set to sunset at the end of this year. Johnson also put forward proposal 41 to allow dude fishing from June 1st through September 30th. Currently dude fishing is allowed from July 1st through September 30th. Another proposal dealing with the Nushagak District is number 42. It calls for opening the Wood River Special Harvest Area when Wood River Escapement is projected at over 700-thousand sockeye. Specifically it calls for that to be done by emergency order and the one gear type that is behind in allocation would be allowed to fish. The Alaska Board of Fisheries Bristol Bay meeting will be December 1st through 8th in Anchorage and the Downtown Hilton. The deadline to comment on proposals is November 17th.

A Good Year in Egegik

The commercial harvest of sockeye salmon in Bristol Bay continues to trickle in but it is obviously going down with each passing day. The total harvest this season is over 29.7-million sockeye and climbing. In many respects the system that paced the 2009 sockeye season in Bristol Bay was Egegik. The total run to the district is over 12.2-million and the total harvest is over 11.2-million sockeye. That puts escapement at 1.14-million sockeye salmon. The escapement goal was between 800-thousand and 1.4-million with a midpoint range of 1.1-million. That means that Fish and Game hit their target in the Egegik District. Paul Salomone is the Area Management Biologist for the District. He made an announcement last Tuesday, which was essentially the last act of actively controlling the fishery. It opened the entire district to set and drift fishing through 9-am Friday July 24th. He said, “What I effectively did with the announcement was just open those 2 days that it would have been closed over the weekend, which helps to prolong opportunities for folks. We don’t really have any conservation needs associated with keeping the fishery closed. If we close the fishery down tender assets and markets have a tendency to dry up. This way we give the opportunity for those assets and markets to stay in place”. The fall fishing schedule in the Egegik District will take effect at 9-am on Monday July 27th and will allow fishing effort from Monday’s at 9-am until Friday’s at 9-am. The sockeye return to Egegik was much larger than expected this season. The preseason forecast called for a run of 9.6-million strong and it ended up exceeding 12-million. The preseason forecast predicted a commercial harvest of 8.2-million sockeye but in reality the harvest will be well in excess of 11-million. The sockeye salmon allocation plan for Egegik calls for the harvest to be split among gear types, with the drifters getting 86-percent of the catch and the setnetters getting 14-percent. The current allocation split is 85 drift and 15-percent set, which is the same split as last year. Next up for Salomone and his staff are some more aerial surveys of escapement and then spawning surveys. Salomone will also be working on a season summary and then preparing Department comments for the proposals that will be before the Alaska Board of Fisheries during their Bristol Bay meeting in early December in Anchorage. There are a handful of proposals that will be before the Board specifically addressing the Egegik District. Proposal 38 put forward by Kim Rice calls for the allocation splits between drifters and setnetters to be suspended when the drift fleet in the district is less than 400 vessels or when the fishing fleets are on limits, which they were again for most of this season’s peak. Another proposal that is sure to spark some debate at the Board of Fish meeting is Proposal 39 put forward by Larry Christensen, which calls for the removal of all set gillnet gear when the setnetters are closed. Christensen claims that the current situation is a hindrance to navigation. You can find all of the proposals that will be before the Board of Fisheries on the Alaska Department of Fish and Game website. Salomone implied that 2009 was a good season and moral was high. He said, “We had a lot of fish to work with. At least Egegik had a fair amount to play with early on. So we had pretty consistent fishing all the way through the year, which makes my job easier. We just had a good year. You have a lot of smiles during good years and a lot of frowns during bad years”.