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Bristol Bay Fisheries Report: July 5, 2020

 

The total harvest for the bay is around 1.2 million, as of yesterday. Taking a look across the bay, the total run is at around 8.5 million. The numbers seem to be picking up on the eastside again.

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The Nushagak district’s daily harvest was 165,000 yesterday, bringing the season’s harvest to 2.6 million. That was harvested 4% by Igushik set-netters, 26% from Nushagak set netters, and 70% from drifters.

In the full Nushagak district, daily escapement was 36,800 yesterday. That makes the total escapement across the Nushagak district 1,056,000

Breaking that down by river system…

The Nushagak River sonar counted 6,100 sockeye up the river yesterday, bringing the sockeye escapement to 454,000. 80 chum also made it up the river for a chum escapement of 56,100. And the sonar counted 12 kings yesterday, bringing king escapement in the Nushagak to 34,070. 

The Wood River counting tower crew counted 3,036 sockeye past the tower as of 6am, making total escapement up the Wood to 554,800 fish so far.  

The Igushik counting crew marked 2,100 fish past the tower as of this morning, making the total escapement 41,200

Togiak’s daily catch of 1,700 brings its total run so far to 11,500 fish. There are no escapement numbers from Togiak yet. 

Over to the east side now…

The daily harvest for the Naknek-Kvichak district was 366,000  yesterday, bringing the total harvest in the Naknek-Kvichak to 1.8 million. That catch came 8% from Kvichak set-netters, 19% from Naknek set-netters, and 73% from Naknek-Kvichak drifters.

A total of 342,000 fish escaped across the Naknek-Kvichak district yesterday, for a total of 775,800.

Breaking that down by river now,

The Alagnak River had an escapement of 762 bringing that season total to 34,100 fish.

In the Naknek River, 333,780 escaped yesterday. That brings the season total to 642,700 fish

The escapement in the Kvichak River was 7,400 yesterday bringing the total season escapement to 99,000 fish.

Taking a look at Egegik with another big push in numbers. The daily harvest for Egegik yesterday was 694,000. That brings the season total to nearly 2.5 million. 89% of that was harvested by drifters, and 11% was setnetters. The escapement for the Egegik was 22,300, which brings the total escapement to around 426,700. 

There was no harvest for Ugashik yesterday, but meanwhile the total harvest is 34, 200. From the last catch, 67% is from Egegik drifters, and 33% from setnetters.

Taking a look at Chignik, a total of  3,924 sockeye passed through the weir as of yesterday, bringing the total escapement to 93,395. The early run for the weir is at 87,155, and the late run is at 6,240. Zero pinks have passed through the weir, and a total of 12 kings have passed through the weir as of this morning, bringing the total king escapement to 146 kings.

Permit registration on July 5 9:00 a.m. to July 7 at 9:00 a.m.

As of 9am this morning there are 1,232 boats fishing across the bay, 350 of which are dboats. That will increase to 1321 boats on Tuesday, 379 of which will be dboats. Taking a look at how those are spread out, 

The Naknek-Kvichak is now in the lead for the most vessels, 32% of the fleet is currently fishing in the Naknek-Kvichak as of this morning, which comes out to 400 boats, 119 of which are dboats. On Tuesday morning, there will be 419 boats, 126 of which are dboats

Nushagak has 30% of the fleet currently fishing there. That’s 377 boats,  101 of which are dboats. Come Tuesday, that will change to 383 boats, 105 of which will be dboats.

In Egegik, there are 382 boats fishing, 120 of which are dboats. That’s 31% of the fleet. Egegik is going to see a jump in vessels on Tuesday with a total of 445 boats, 138 of which are dboats. 

In Togiak there are still 36 boats holding down the fort, come Tuesday that will not change. That’s just 3% of the fleet.

Ugashik has a total of 37 boats, 10 of which are dboats. This is 3% of the fleet fishing. On Tuesday there will be 38 total vessels, 10 of which are dboats. 

A July 4email from Scott Raborn:

Catch indices remained strong [July 4], which means reaching the preseason forecast even more probable. 

Today, 31% of the fish were caught in the bottom 50 meshes of the 100-mesh net.  Had we used the shallower 60-mesh net from previous years, catch indices would have been roughly 75% of what was observed in the new 100-mesh net.  This approximation does not take into account how salmon orient when approaching the bottom edge of a gillnet and assumes they hit the net at the depth they were originally swimming.  

So yes, the deeper net we are using this year has inflated the catch indices, but this has no effect on how well the 2020 indices forecast the run’s pattern and timing.  Actually, that’s not true as intercepting more of the run, whether vertically or horizontally, can only improve forecast accuracy.  The only drawback from changing the net is that historical catch indices are less comparable.  Given we were missing more than half of the migration beyond Stations 10 and 12 in some of the previous years (as shown by last year’s data), this seems inconsequential. 

The crews sampled as many stations today as time and energy would allow.  This effort resulted in an unprecedented coverage of the Port Moller transect—16 stations were fished!  Now that the entire transect can be covered, we used extra sets to assess how banded the distribution might be on any given day; hence, the sampling of odd numbered stations.  Motivation for this extra sampling comes from the stark changes in catch indices observed between adjacent even numbered stations on some days.  The results from today showed that the mode at Station 6 extended at least to Station 5, and that sometimes modes are missed in between even numbered stations (e.g., Station 9 today; see Figure 2 in the Catch Update).  The catches from odd stations will not be used for daily index calculation or stock composition estimates, and we will continue to prioritize coverage of the transect range.  However, we will continue to make sets at odd numbered stations when time allows.

PMTF Stock Composition Status: The remaining genetic samples from 7/3 (Stations 8-20) and all of 7/4 samples will arrive in Port Moller tomorrow night. 

                                                                  

Station               Index

Station 2            0

Station 3            0

Station 4            16

Station 5            362

Station 6            393     

Station 7            Not fished

Station 8            82

Station 9            135

Station 10          62

Station 11          18

Station 12         43

Station 13          21

Station 14          25

Station 15          Not fished

Station 16          87

Station 17          Not fished

Station 18          151

Station 19          Not fished

Station 20          219

Station 21           Not fished

Station 22           0

If you’d like to get your message out to the fleet on this show, send it over in an email … to fish@kdlg.org. If you’d like to get in touch about anything else, give us a call at 842-2200 or send an email to fish@kdlg.org.