Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Another Record Breaking Run for Bristol Bay

July 1 2022
The Nushagak District broke its record for the largest single-day harvest. Fisherfolk caught 2.46 million salmon on Thursday. That’s about 600,000 fish over last year’s record breaking single day harvest.

The district had back-to-back record harvests exactly one year ago, when fleets caught1.7 million on June 30 and 1.82 million on July 1. Fish and Game Area Management Biologist Tim Sands says the trend for runs like this is relatively recent – but it has become a regular occurance.

“It wasn’t until 2017 that we even really broke a million sockeye salmon harvest in a day and that was amazing," he said. "And then it was happening every year, now to break two million is just – wow.”

Port Moller technicians predicted a big run would hit the bay this weekend. Sands says a pattern has emerged over the last few years; big runs hit the district around June 26, followed by a lull, and then another peak around June 30 and July 1.

“When we saw the forecast for the wind on the 30th. I was telling people, ‘Hey, that's going to be the day, the fish are going to show up then,’ And they did,” he said.

Port Moller numbers indicate the district runs will stay high for another few days, but Sands says he is unsure if the record will be broken again any time soon.

“I think if you ever use June 30 2022, as the bar, things will always be slower," said Sands. "But I think it's still good fishing out there. My guess is we will catch more than a million fish again today.”

Tyone Raymond fishes on the F/V Mr. Fox in the Nushagak District. He says fishing has been great – despite terrible weather.

“We were out fishing all day and all night, and it was blowing pretty hard. Fish were piling in,” he said.

While Bristol Bay’s sockeye runs are breaking records, king runs up the Nushagak have been weak. Raymond says he and his crew try to help Chinook escape.

“Whenever we see some big kings come in we check immediately to see if they’re alive, and if they’re alive we put them right back over the side in the hopes that they might go up and increase their escapement numbers,” he said.

While Port Moller numbers indicate strong runs this weekend, that pace may slow down next week.

https://www.kdlg.org/news/2022-07-01/nushagak-district-breaks-record-for-single-day-harvest

July 2 2022
Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Dillingham with an announcement:

Nushagak River escapements through midnight for King Salmon at cumulative of 40,888...


The King count on the Nush is always off due to the placement of the Sonar.
It's up by Protage Creek and in too shallow of water for counting Kings, it's all about the Reds.

It was exsplained rather well a few years back in this story.

Fish and Game now estimates Nushagak king escapement much greater than originally counted

09/13/2017
The sonar only counted 56,000, just over minimum escapement, but biologists think low water and abundance of sockeye hindered the sonar's king counting ability. Post-season aerial surveys found plenty of kings on spawning grounds in all tributaries.

This year the Nushagak king run struggled a bit, at least by the numbers tallied at the Portage Creek sonar site. The kings did make their escapement goal range, but the return was lower than Fish and Game was expecting. Now results from a post-season aerial survey have confirmed what biologists suspected during the season: the king return was probably quite a bit stronger than the sonar accounted for.

On July 12 the Nushagak king count finally eked past 55,000, the lower end of its escapement goal range. It had not been the return that anybody was expecting. But now Fish and Game now says the official escapement count only tells about half the story. Lee Borden is the assistant area management biologist for sport fish in Bristol Bay.

“We ended up putting past the sonar 56,000. Like you said, that number just barely passes our lower goal of 55,000," said Lee Borden, assistant area management biologist for Bristol Bay sport fish. "[But] we have reason to believe now that the run was closer to an average run than that number would indicate.”

In fact, the ADF&G biologists now estimate the 2017 escapement was well above the 55,000 goal, though the sonar count will not be adjusted. The new estimate is based largely on data collected from an extensive post-season aerial survey of all the Nushagak king salmon tributaries (more on that in a moment). To understand why the count was off, Borden points first to the sonar, which was designed to count sockeye, not kings.

"The reason it wasn’t intended to count kings is that kings run farther out in the river, and they run deeper. So if you get a lot of sockeye, they’ll be in closer to the sonar and they’ll block out some of the kings, so you’ll miss some of them on the sonar," he said.

This year the sonar problem was exacerbated by the second highest number of sockeye ever counted in the river, and also a water level that was the lowest many Nushagak veterans say they had ever seen.

"That leads to the water being potentially a little warmer than average," said Borden. "The kings are looking for cold water, so they’ll run a little deeper than they normally would. And having so many sockeye pushes the kings even farther. So you have those two factors working synergistically together [to complicate the count]."

Early on it was difficult to tell if the run was coming in late, or small, or both. But by June 23, the Department reduced the bag limit for sport fish caught Nushagak kings to one per day, two per season. Some sport fish operations complained that the commercial fishery should share the burden and sit out a few tides to let more kings get by.

Based purely on the escapement numbers, Borden says the Department could have put even more tougher restrictions in place to protect the run. But both he and manager Jason Dye suspected there were more kings in the river than the sonar was counting. Dye believed 2017 was shaping up similar to 1997, another very low water year when post-season surveys showed far more kings than were counted as escapement.

Other indicators suggested that was happening. The test fishing at the sonar site was picking up more kings in the nets than the sonar was counting, and the anglers started saying the season was actually going just fine.

"There were days when the sonar would report maybe several hundred fish, and we would have word from fishermen upriver that fishing on that day was good. Which leads us to believe there were more fish than the sonar counted," said Borden.

After the season, Borden was tasked with flying extensive surveys of the spawning grounds. He basically traced every Nushagak tributary by helicopter, carefully counting individual kings in the river and those that had already spawned and died.

"What we found was comparable to historical averages for the surveys. The spawners in the tributaries were about you’d expect for a normal year. If it was a really low year, we would’ve seen less fish in the tributaries.”

The official escapement count of 56,000 will stand, but the Department will note that the number of kings that actually made it upriver was much closer to previous years' average of roughly 90,000. Subsistence and sports fishermen all seemed pleased with the abundance of kings during the season, and the commercial fleet hauled in 32,000, a little more than average, all helping affirm the Nushagak as one of the healthiest king salmon rivers in Alaska.

https://www.kdlg.org/fisheries/2017...ent-much-greater-than-originally-counted

What's the price this year?

Way too early to know, Peter Pan quoted $1.00 early on and have since raised it to $1.15.

I'd guess the Highliners with good RSW fish will see a $1.25 or more.
Way too many variables to really guess though.

Yesterday afternoon FRI says run is about two days early, and they would down grade from 71.9 preseason estimate to 64.7 total run. Of course this is predicated on strong port moeller numbers the next three days or so.

Big spikes like this don't work so well for the cannerys.
They get plugged and could have to go on limits then everybody's pizzed.

Bristol Bay's sockeye run at 69.7 million fish and counting.

Broken all records recorded since they started keeping records in 1884.

Fishermen think the run could go as high as 90 million fish.

Fish and Game forecast 75 million.

Processors running short on fiber, Freight haulers running short on freezer vans.
Whoever runs out first will always be remembered as the one that stopped the fishing on the best year ever.

Delta Western Naknek ran out of diesel, processors hauling their own to keep power generation running.

Lots of happy fisher types in Bristol Bay this season.

Prices should be low...

The best guesstimate I'm getting is the base will be $1.15 that was posted by Peter Pan early on.

There are Highliners sitting at #650,000+ right now.
Many over #500K.
There's a family that set-nets on the Westside of the bay.
I think they have either 3 or 4 permits between them.
They have over #1,000,000 and still fishing.

There all making bank....

Crappy weather is on the way, that will probably shut it down for the 2022 season.

It has been insane up here since about the June 23d

Seems F&G Ain;t fuggin up everywhere. I'm none too happy with Cook Inlet.

They have pretty much ruined PU this year. I don't give a damn about Commercials- only filling my freezer for the next year.

Narrow minded, I suppose.

Still running the Jackie M for Copper River?
Heard it was blowing 70 the other night, you out there in that weather?

The prices might go up. The Kenai setnetters were just closed for the season...

Never did run it they tendered for us. I run the dock for Copper River in Naknek. It’s been blowing like a bus load of queers for three days. I got some relief today but it’s supposed to blow again tomorrow. Jerry Ball lost a POS tender at Petersen Point Sunday. The Beaver if you’ve heard of it all lived with one getting a flight to ANK.

Heard a net barge out on the fishing grounds broke loose and found it's way to Eddie Clarks setnet site.

The weather is bound to get some of the boats to pull out and call it quits.

What's a big day for you guys as far as pounds to off load goes?

It's gotta suck to try to do anything off the Docks at Petersen Point in bad weather...they don't catch no slack.

Good for you guys. Our Columbia runs are in the toilet.

Were the small fry over here and only have about 180,000 lbs of holding capacity so my biggest day this year was 348,000 lbs and can do 500,000 lbs pretty easy on a good tides but just don’t have the space. This year the tides sucked during the peak.

Par for the course, biggest haul on the shortest tide, never fails.
You must keep a loaded tender at the dock through a low?

I built the twin double pumper barges for Trident, twin 75hp.
Pump crews done before the bottom of the tide.
They've hit 1m on a tide, but they have the RSWs to hold it.

I think their top day freezing this year was 1.5m but they are holding a 1.2m average.

We’re in the old Bay Watch facility and with a pair of barges making a Tee and a single 971 Ryco I can run 12 to 1400 lbs a minute so even on a [bleep] tide I can move a lot of fish. I held more boats this year than ever as the processors cut me some space I would fill them back up. We had more big tenders this year than the past years and made it work like you have to up here.

Cool picture of the Raven Jeff. I pumped them a few times to keep them from having to cross the bay to Dillingham.

A lot like zucchini in a couple of ways.