While things are all but done in the Nushagak, we’re still seeing some effort on the east side with Egegik posting yesterday’s biggest catch. And as fishing winds down, there is mounting focus on prices.
While fishing is all but over in the Nushagak, we’re still seeing some effort on the east side; Egegik posted yesterday’s biggest catch.
The Nushagak has all but wrapped up for the season; yesterday’s catch of 12,000 was the smallest since the first day of fishing this summer. The cumulative harvest on the Nush is still around 14.7 million. The district’s escapement yesterday was 28,000, which pushed the cumulative up to 2.96 million.
Togiak caught 33,000 fish yesterday, putting the cumulative at 673,000. Escapement in the district was 29,000 yesterday and 171,000 on the season.
Egegik had the biggest catch on the East side of the bay, bringing in 83,000 and bumping the cumulative up to 14.7 million. There are no new escapement numbers coming from over there, so the season escapement stays flat at 2.3 million.
Ugashik is still catching fish, but with a harvest of 41,000 yesterday it looks like things are slowing down in what has been an exceptionally late run. The season total in the district is still just south of a million, right now adding up to 957,000. Ugashik saw 138,000 fish escape upriver yesterday, bringing the cumulative escapement to 1.4 million.
Finally, the Naknek-Kvichak caught 38,000 fish yesterday and 11.4 million so far this summer. The day’s escapement in the district was 19,512, and the cumulative escapement is 6.1 million.
Adding all that up across the bay, yesterday’s catch came out to 207,000 and bumped the season total harvest up to 42.5 million.
Looking down the peninsula to Area M, the South Peninsula has now caught 1.1 million sockeye and 10.7 million pinks. On the north side, the total sockeye harvest is up to 1.8 million. The combined total from Area M is just shy of 3 million sockeye, a milestone it can reach with just about 20,000 more fish.
And we’ve also got the latest numbers from the Chignik Weir. They counted 9,688 reds yesterday, bringing the season total for sockeye up to 517,000.
Togiak’s run is right on time this year. That's a big difference from last summer’s extremely late run. The cumulative harvest so far is over 670,000, and the total run is more than 843,500. Last year’s harvest was just over 858,000.
Togiak Seafoods is processing the hauls of about 65 fishermen this year -- 75% set netters and 25% drifters. KDLG’s Izzy Ross talked with Mike Gilbert, the general manager for Togiak Seafoods about how the season is unfolding for them.
Togiak Seafoods hasn’t announced its base price yet, but we have heard from fishermen that many processors have set their base price at $1.35. For some context on the complex history of Bristol Bay’s economy, Izzy talked to Kevin Barry, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He started by recounting a contentious lawsuit - settled in 2003 - between processors and fishermen.
Just a heads up, we’re not going to have any shows this weekend. Friday’s Daily Run Summary will be the last scheduled set of numbers we get for the time being, so we won’t have a show for you on Saturday and Sunday.
We’re in the final stretch of this summer’s fish report now, but we’re still taking suggestions and requests. If there’s anything we missed or anything you wanna hear about, send it our way. You can email the show at fish@kdlg.org or call 842-5281. That’s the same place to go with song requests and messages to the fleet.