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.
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