Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

A healthy plug of chum salmon and an improved price over last season bolstered the opening week of the Lynn Canal drift gillnet season.

Preliminary numbers showed more than 100 boats averaging about 580 chum salmon each during the two-day opening that started Sunday. “We had boats that had 300 to 400 chum right off the bat,” said Mark Sogge, commercial fish biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

With sockeye numbers low, nearly the entire fleet headed to north of Juneau to capitalize on hatchery-raised dogs.

Processors paid 75 cents a pound, up 15 cents over last season’s average. Fish prices typically move only upward as a fishing season progresses. “It’s a big bump. The processors didn’t have any fish in their freezers,” said gillnet skipper Norman Hughes.

Biologist Sogge said strong southerly winds in days leading to the opening pushed salmon toward the Haines fleet. The catch included plump ones, he said. “The fish were coming in large. There were some really nice, eight to nine-pound (summer) chum salmon.”

Catches, however, tapered off quickly. “It started out kind of strong but then it was scratch fishing for one-and-a-half days,” Hughes said.

Chum numbers and price could be critical for the fleet, as early sockeye returns to Chilkoot Lake appear low. A weir count of 350 reds this week is about one third the average for the same week in previous years.

“Chilkoot doesn’t look good. It was a really good parent year (in 2012), maybe too good,” said biologist Sogge. “My fear is that we had overescapement.”

Biologists estimate between 38,000 and 86,000 sockeye is the ideal number of sockeye that should return to the lake for maximum production. Too many fish spawning diminishes the survival of eggs.

“The lake seems the most productive at around 60,000 (escapement),” Sogge said. In the 2012 parent year, 114,000 sockeye made it to Chilkoot Lake. (Last year, 86,700 reds escaped into Chilkoot following a parent year escapement of 65,000.)

Chilkat Lake is presenting a puzzle to biologists, with 260 reds past the lake’s sonar station but only 17 – “almost nothing” – scooped up by downriver fish wheels, Sogge said. That’s a reversal of the norm, as Chilkat reds often mill in the river for weeks before entering the lake.

“It’s kind of a disconnect not to see them in the wheels but see them in the lake,” Sogge said. Possible explanations include that fish moved before wheels were put in the river or that the river has become divided in terms of distribution of fish.

To reduce interception of returning Chilkat king salmon, commercial fishing was closed at night north of Sherman Point.