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Bristol Bay Fisheries Report: July 9, 2017

Sarah Grace Durrance

The total run shoots to 32 million, and the Kvichak and Ugashik Rivers still have a lot of fish coming, if the preseason forecast is correct. Even with most of the fleet on processor catch limits, the Saturday haul was still another 2 million sockeye. How big is 2017 going to?

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.)

Yet another two million catch day was reported Saturday, and along with good passage counts, the total run to Bristol Bay is up to 32 million sockeye. The Kvichak River is achingly slow to really arrive, but for the processors who are struggling to keep up, and the east side fleet on limits (due to big catches in Egegik and Nushagak), maybe that's ok. Ugashik is on a steady build, and the Nushagak is in striking distance of posting its biggest run of all time. The Port Moller Test Fishery had plenty more fish in the nets Saturday, mostly in the middle of the transect. All indications are that 2017 is going to go bigger than its preseason forecast, maybe by quite a bit. On today's program, ADF&G's Paul Salomone has the latest on Egegik and Ugashik, KDLG's Nick Ciolino gives a shoutout from the Wood River Special Harvest Area, and Jawanza Brown, a greenhorn from Flint, Michigan we profiled earlier this season, offers an update from Ugashik. Plus, Zoey Laird reports on the importance of family, faith, and fish she found at the camp of Father Victor and Lena Nick near Kanakanak Beach in Dillingham.

Credit Zoey Laird
Father Victor Nick, a Coffee Point set netter, sets up camp with his wife Lena and their children every year near Kanakanak Beach.

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 fish@kdlg.org or dave@kdlg.org, or call 907-842-5281. 

Have feedback, suggestions of something you'd like to hear? ReachAveryLill / Nick Ciolino /Allison Mollenkamp / or Caitlin Tan (in Naknek)

Credit Curry Cunningham, UW - Fisheries Research Institute
Heard about a "wall of fish" showing up into the Bay this year? This graph of inshore catch and escapement pretty clearly shows that wall, which so far has yet to let up.

Credit Sarah Grace Durrance
Bag of chilled sockeye coming onto a tender in the Nushagak District.