Cumulative harvest in the bay is only a few hundred thousand fish below the pre-season forecast, as the run wanes a bit. Daily harvest fell below 1 million fish baywide yesterday.
The total run in Bristol Bay is 51.7 million fish. Yesterday’s harvest in the bay dropped below 1 million fish for the first time in a while, and the total harvest baywide is 34.3 million fish, just a few hundred thousand below the pre-season forecast of 34.56 million. Bay-wide escapement is now 17.2 million.
THE NUMBERS:
Nushagak District
In the Nushagak district, fishers caught 164,000 sockeye yesterday, making the season’s total harvest in the Nushagak district 8.5 million fish.
Daily escapement in the full Nushagak district yesterday was 47,000 fish, bringing the district-wide total escapement to 3.5 million fish.
Let’s break that into the rivers:
Igushik River
In the Igushik river, a daily escapement of 14,000 yesterday pushed total escapement in that river to 247,000 fish.
Nushagak River
The Nushagak river’s escapement yesterday was 9,000, making total escapement up the Nushagak river so far this season 1.2 million.
Wood River
And in the Wood river, 24,000 fish escaped yesterday, bringing total escapement in the Wood river to 2.1 million fish.
In total, the Nushagak district’s run is now just over 12.1 million fish. That’s the third largest run in the bay at this point.
Togiak
In the Togiak district, there was no daily harvest yesterday. Total harvest in Togiak is still 161,000.
6,000 fish escaped in the Togiak district yesterday, bringing total escapement there to just over 58,000 fish. Togiak’s cumulative run is 219,000 fish.
Naknek-Kvichak
In the Naknek-Kvichak district, fishers caught 415,000 yesterday. This makes total harvest in the Naknek-Kvichak district just below 12.6 million fish.
In the whole Naknek-Kvichak district, 135,000 fish escaped yesterday, making the district’s cumulative escapement just over 10 million fish.
Let’s take a look at escapement in the Naknek-Kvichak District by river:
Alagnak River
The Alagnak river’s daily escapement was 49,000 fish yesterday, pushing total escapement in the Alagnak river to 2.1 million.
Kvichak River
54,000 fish escaped up the Kvichak river yesterday, making cumulative escapement up the Kvichak 3.9 million.
Naknek River
And in the Naknek river, a daily escapement of 32,500 yesterday pushes cumulative escapement up the Naknek to 4 million fish.
Altogether, the Naknek-Kvichak’s total run is now 22.6 million fish, the largest run in the bay at this point in the season.
Egegik
Egegik fishers harvested 260,000 fish yesterday. That brings Egegik’s season total harvest to 11.3 million.
27,000 fish escaped in Egegik yesterday, which makes cumulative escapement up the Egegik river this season 2.3 million. Egegik’s overall run stands at 13.6 million fish--the second largest run in the bay right now.
Ugashik
In the Ugashik district, a daily catch of 150,000 fish yesterday pushed total harvest in the district to just over 1.7 million fish.
And 97,000 fish escaped up the Ugashik river yesterday, making the season total escapement so far 1.2 million. Adding the 200,000-fish in-river estimate, Ugashik’s total run so far this season is 3.1 million fish.
Permit registrations
Vessel registrations ended July 17 at 9am, meaning anyone can fish anywhere in the bay at this point. Here at KDLG, we continued to report vessel registrations because they showed up on the daily run summary. We’re sorry about the confusion. There is no 48-hour waiting period for transferring districts, that ended at 9am on Friday, July 17. Fish on.
Chignik
5,879 sockeye passed the Chignik weir yesterday, and 4,404 late run sockeye. This brings the total sockeye run at the weir to 180,618 sockeye, 49,016 in the late run.
42 kings also passed the weir yesterday, bringing the king run to 657, and 18 pinks passed the weir, making the total pink run at the Chignik weir 475 pinks.
Area M
Yesterday’s harvest information for Area M’s south peninsula is confidential. Here’s what harvest information is available to the public:
Fleet caught 40,000 sockeye in Area M yesterday, bringing the season’s total harvest of sockeye to 1.56 million. There were also daily harvests of 12 kings, 44 coho, 53 pinks, and 25 chum in Area M yesterday.
Messages to the fleet:
This one goes out to Hunter Davis on the F/V Linda K: wishing a happy and fishy birthday to my one and only fisherman! I hope you catch boatloads of fish today, you definitely deserve it. I'll crack open a beer here on land for you, an Alaskan of course! Missing you and thinking of you always, I love you baby. Come home soon please!
Your girl onshore,
Aubrey Arevalo (Salkum, Washington)