SteelieDrew,

Area 8 is Skagit Bay. I haven't looked at the tribal regs on line, but I was told how many days the tribes have scheduled to fish for Baker sockeye. There wasn't any tribal fishery going 24/7 for a month. If the runsize is close to the forecast, there should be plenty of fish in the lake for the recreational fishery. However, the tribal fishery occurs downstream of the Baker River and prior to the runsize update. What that means is that if the runsize is a lot lower than the forecast, then the tribes may take all or most of the allowable harvest. If the runsize is a lot larger than forecast, then the tribes will catch less than half of the allowable harvest, and the lake will have more sockeye than the recreational fleet can harvest. With only a couple years of fishing for this run, there isn't much of a harvest model to use, so a lot of guessing is going on.

If you don't want to gamble on the lake fishery happening, then you might want to join the river fishery and fish on the unknown runsize. Some river fishermen have the sockeye dialed in pretty well, and they'll get a few regardless of runsize.

Sg