The first wall of fish have usually hit the rivers by this time. Peak is typically July 4 give or take a day or two. This weekend will be very telling.

Graph says it all.

http://www.cf.adfg.state.ak.us/geninfo/finfish/salmon/catchval/charts/bbaysock.php

On the way-------I HOPE Yes this weekend will be VERY telling.

900,000lbs delivered yesterday to one processor.

http://csfish.adfg.state.ak.us/mariner/brbcatch/brbsummary.php

Here's another look, run's building daily maybe the kings are just taking there time too.

Noticed the graph is based on the harvest. Since we all "know" that Alaska doesn't fish until escapements are met isn;t the more important information how many has made it to the river.

Since obviously the commercial fishery is under way the escapement must have been assured so what is the worry?

Tight lines
Curt

Another bit of interesting info I heard second hand is that the sockeye are on the small side this year. Not only are they small but they seem to be feeding right up to entering the river. The processors don't like this because they don't want to pay for a belly full of euphausids.

Heard the same problem for the whiting, small fish so they shut it down for awhile.

WN1A -
It is starting to look more and more like that the North Pacific is on the cusp of marine survival regime shift. If so we may see tougher times ahead for many Alaskan salmon stocks and improvements for some PNW stocks.

Of course folks will not know with any certianity whether survival changes are occuring for another decade or so.

Tight lines
Curt

Hmmmmmmmmm.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

Hope there late.

How did salmon ever survive changes in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation for the countless millenia leading up to now?

I'm headed up to fish the Nush on the 3rd. I suspect they are a bit later than usual but it started raining up there yesterday and it looks like rain on and off for the next 5 days or so. It should pick up now.

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Nush went C&R and no bait, so that tells me managers are sweating a little anyhow ...

Man wasn't mining the fish along with the timber in the river valleys.

Their on the menu at Anthony's

I hear ya Jerry... but the Bristol Bay sockeye runs have numbered in the tens of millions... even in recent years.

There isn't any logging or mining to speak of going on there?

How is it that a climate phenomenon that has been occurring since before recorded history all of a sudden is having such a dramatic affect on Alaskan salmon runs?

You generalized your statement to "salmon" not including a local. So my answer was for salmon on the west coast.

I said 'salmon' Jerry... because the southwest region and Cook Inlet Alaska king runs have been in the sh!tter the last couple of years too. None of these runs are affected by logging or mining and they've managed to survive the commercial fishing pressure up there fairly well... until now.

Obviously there's a problem somewhere... I'm just not convinced it can all be blamed on PDO.

My current theory:

I remember when a guy told me that in most cases the biggest problem for WA and B.C. salmon is Alaska. He said that AK is extra careful with their own runs and fish the hell out of the fish headed to the south.

So, that got me thinking that in the near future, all those countries on the other side of the Pacific will be catching AK's salmon, BC's, WA's, and CA's.

Isn't it only a matter of time before someone will be catching 2 pound kings just out there in international waters for some weird soup in Hong Kong?

Makes sense to me. With the price fish are getting these days, you got to get'em first.

When they looked at the sediments in Karluk Lake, on Kodiak Island they were able to look back about 2200 years. Obver that time, the runs showed a lot of variability. The low escapement was about 200,000. The maximum was 4,000,000 or so. All of this variability occurred in the absence of Euro-American logging, mining, development, and other activities. Simply natural response to the environment.

Now, the MSY escapement goal for the sockeye, I believe, is in the vicinity of 1,000,000. Which means that a small scew-up in catching a few too many coupled with some bad environmnetal conditions and you can drive the stock right into oblivion.

A chracterisitc of MSY management is that the room for error is small. Most MSY escapement goals actually represent a small fraction of the pristine stock. There is no room for a poor year in the environment, a flood, or whatever.

With no rain for 10 days its not surprising they were a bit late. I just got off the phone with 2 people up there, its been raining for 2 days now and its forcasted to rain another 5 straight. They caught 13 kings this morning and 7 in the afternoon sprinkled with an abundance of chums, even with no bait/scent. Its still no bait/scent and C&R atm but that will probably change in a few days now that they are moving into the system. One thing this hiccup will likely do is finish off the outfits on the Nush that were borderline already, I'm told a ton of bookings were canceled when the C&R news hit.

There's also a lot of species that have gone extinct on this planet without our help. Most can be traced back to extreme changes in climate, I think its how mother nature fixes her mistakes.