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Bristol Bay Fisheries Report: June 22, 2019

Isabelle Ross/KDLG

It's the weekend numbers edition! Port Moller is seeing a big push in catches – with daily catch indices in the double digits across almost all stations.

We have the first super short weekend report this Saturday.

 
Port Moller Test Fishery's Station 22 had a relatively large catch yesterday. Perhaps more noteworthy was the catch pattern across more or less the entire entrance to Bristol Bay; every station except for station 24 exhibited double digit indices.

Credit Courtesy of Scott Raborn
The blue dot indicates the location of Station 22.

 The analysts say they will have to wait and see how these test catches translate into catch and escapement before the figures can be used for in-season forecasting; but they hope sampling the entire transect will stabilize the run per index throughout the season. The run per index is how many fish inshore each Port Moller index point represents.

If it does stabilize the run index, peaks and valleys in catches at Port Moller will foretell the same inshore run with greater accuracy.

 

On the west side, the Nushagak District saw a daily catch of 245,000 for a cumulative harvest of 319,500. The pre-season forecast showed approximately 8 million available for harvest. The total run so far is at 624,200.

 

At the Wood River, escapement yesterday was 91,500. By 6 a.m. today escapement was 7,200, for a total of 201,900. That’s out of a total goal escapement range of 700,000 to 1.8 million. The total pre-season run forecast for the Wood is 4.5 million.

 

35,000 sockeye escaped past the Nushagak River Sonar yesterday, for a cumulative escapement of 102,800. That’s out of an escapement goal range of 370,000 to 900,000. The forecasted run is 4 million.

 

3,900 Chinook escaped up the river for a total of 22,300, and chum escapement is at 22,300, for a total of 52,500.

There are openers for set netters in both the Nushagak and Igushik Sections, from 5:00 PM this afternoon until 1:00 PM tomorrow. Commercial fishing with drift gillnets will open both the Nushagak and Igushik Sections, from 6:30 PM until 11:30 PM tonight. It will open again from 7:30 AM until 1:00 PM tomorrow.

In Egegik, yesterday’s catch brought in 86,000, for a cumulative catch of 223,000. Escapement was at 7,000 for a total escapement of 27,000.

There’s an 8-hour opener tomorrow in Egegik for drifters and set netters. It starts at 4:15 AM and ends at 12:15 PM.

There is an opener scheduled in Ugashik for drift and set gillnets. It will last for 8 hours on Sunday, from 3:30 PM to 11:30 PM.

In Ugashik, the inriver test fishery and counting tower projects are being deployed today and should be up and running soon.

The total harvest for the Naknek-Kvichak District is 3,500. The Naknek River tower started counting yesterday, and total escapement came to 800.

 

At the Chignik Weir, escapement as of noon today was 6,700 reds, for a total early run escapement 78,600, still far short of Fish and Game’s June 25 goal escapement of 215,000 to 320,000.  

 

The South Peninsula’s Area M total sockeye harvest was at 445,000 through yesterday. The majority of those fish were caught in the South Unimak and Shumagin Islands sections. 15,100 were caught in the Dolgoi Island area. The pink harvest is at 6.2 million.

 

Area M on the North Peninsula now has a total sockeye harvest of 68,000.

 
Catch this program nightly live at 6 p.m., with replays at 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. on AM 670, and online at KDLG.org. (With early broadcasts of the numbers 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 call 907-842-5281.

Have feedback or suggestions of something you'd like to hear? Reach Izzy Ross / Tyler Thompson / Alex Hager / Sage Smiley (in Naknek)

Contact the author at isabelle@kdlg.org 907-842-2200.

Izzy Ross is the news director at KDLG, the NPR member station in Dillingham. She reports, edits, and hosts stories from around the Bristol Bay region, and collaborates with other radio stations across the state.