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Bristol Bay Fisheries Report: July 3, 2018

Mike Davis

The Wood River set a new escapement record Monday that is nearly twice as high as the previous record, which was set in 1983. In Egegik, ADF&G is switching the fleet to fishing the morning tide in hopes of allowing more sockeye to make it up river to spawn.

 

Both catch and escapement in the Nushagak District are going gangbusters. For the third day in a row and the fourth time this season, fishermen in the district pulled in over a million sockeye on Monday, 1.16 million to be precise.

A record number of sockeye made it up the Wood River to spawn on yesterday, and a big push of reds up the Nushagak River past the Portage Creek sonar made it unlikely the fleet will see mesh size restrictions as a conservation effort this season. Monday’s Wood River escapement, 1.1 million reds, is nearly many fish as the previous record set in 1983.

On the east side of the bay, Egegik closed today to switch to fishing the morning tide. Area management biologist Paul Salomone explained he is enacting this strategy because escapement on the river is falling behind desired levels.

Also on tonight’s show, we feature the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s catch samplers and take a behind the scenes look at their role in producing the department’s analysis of the age of fish returning to Bristol Bay.

Catch this program nightly at 6 p.m., 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. on AM 670, and online at KDLG.org. (With early broadcasts Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 p.m.)

Letters from home to your friends and family in the Bay this summer? Email us at avery@kdlg.org, or call 907-842-5281.

Have feedback, suggestions of something you'd like to hear? Reach Avery Lill / Izzy Ross / Austin Fast / or Mitch Borden (in Naknek).