An unexpected surge of Chilkoot-run sockeye, stable prices and hatchery chum catches helped make the 2014 commercial gillnet fishery another lucrative one for the fleet.
The total gillnet haul – 1.68 million fish – was the fourth largest on record, topped by years 2011, 2012 and 2013. Hatchery chums made up 77 percent of the season’s total catch. (The canal’s record salmon harvest – 2.17 million fish – came in 2012.)
“It was my third best season ever,” said Norman Hughes. “We had a lot of opportunity to fish and I fished a lot.”
Other fishermen, however, said the effect of the record harvest will be dissipated by the numbers of boats that crowded into lower Lynn Canal for hatchery chums.
According to the state Department of Fish and Game, 251 boats made their way to the fishery during the season, more than half of all gillnet boats in Southeast. On a single week in the middle of July, 198 boats fished here.
“There’s a lot more fish being caught, but not by what you would call the traditional fleet,” said 38-year fisherman J.R. Churchill. “In local fleet take-home pay, we’re not crowing about the fourth biggest season. That will show itself at the (lumberyard) and around town. There’s less of that money around town.”
Churchill and other fishermen interviewed this week also voiced concern that so much of the fishery rests on a release of hatchery-raised fish. Similar fisheries elsewhere have gone bust due to factors including predation on juvenile fish by whales.
Much of the season’s extra fishing opportunity came when what looked like an average sockeye return to Chilkoot Lake “rocketed up in mid-July,” opening commercial harvest to the mouth of Chilkoot River. The fleet caught 235,000 reds, the highest harvest since 1993 and nearly twice the 10-year average. About 45 percent of the catch were fish returning to Chilkoot.
“The Chilkoot pretty much drove the sockeye harvest for 2014,” said Randy Bachman, the state Department of Fish and Game’s commercial fisheries biologist in Haines. Escapement into Chilkoot Lake reached 105,000, about twice the number projected and above the state’s escapement goal range of 38,000 to 86,000.
But the big bump at Chilkoot was offset partly by a disappointing sockeye return to Chilkat Lake, where escapement of 71,000 fish notched at the bottom of the state’s targeted escapement of 70,000 to 150,000.
“It was the lower end, but we made it. The season started strong until early July when it fizzled and it flatlined until mid-September. There’s a good shot in the river still coming in,” Bachman said.
Why sockeye returns to the two, major lake systems here tend to “see-saw” – one surges when the other wanes and the two never surge the same year – is a decades-old riddle for local fisheries biologists.
Bachman said this week he had no explanation for Chilkoot’s unexpected boom and the near-bust on the Chilkat, that was forecast to be significantly stronger. Coastal sockeye runs are notoriously hard to predict, he said, and much is still unknown about what happens to fish in salt water, where they spent most of their lives.
The fall, wild chum run proved a disappointment, with a harvest of 20,000 fish compared to a 10-year-average harvest of 72,000 and a long-term average harvest of 154,000.
About 145,000 chum escaped into the Chilkat River, about in the middle of the state’s escapement goal range of 75,000 to 170,000.
Biologist Bachman said he supports raising the lower end of the fall chum escapement goal to 90,000 or 100,000 fish. He said he bases that on numbers of chum he’s seen at spawning grounds.
Gillnetter Bill Thomas said he supported eliminating the lower end of the escapement range. “The higher (the escapement), the better. That just means you’re going to have more fish to catch.”
The burden of reaching escapement goals needs to be borne by all commercial gear groups fishing on a given stock, said Thomas.
He pointed to interception of Chilkat-bound salmon by seine boats near Excursion Inlet whose fishing area, he said, was expanded offshore.
Restrictions on gillnetters in the Chilkat chum fishery limited catches of coho salmon,which returned in “bumper crop” numbers, biologist Bachman said.
The coho harvest totaled 58,000, compared to a 10-year average harvest of 41,000. The long-term average harvest is 53,000 fish.
“We had a bumper crop, but to protect chum, we let a lot of coho in the Chilkat River,” Bachman said.
The fishery’s pink salmon harvest also came in below average. The harvest of 90,600 pinks compared to a 10-year average of 177,000 fish.
Average, per-pound prices paid to fishermen stayed roughly even with those from 2013, and included 62 cents per pound for chum, $1.81 for sockeye, $1.16 for coho and 30 cents for pinks. Last year, fishermen were paid 60 cents for chum, $1.72 for sockeye, $1.33 for coho and 35 cents for pinks.