Subsistence fishermen who netted buckets of eulachon on the Chilkoot River late last week got another chance this week along the Chilkat, including at Jones Point.
“Lots of people were catching them out there yesterday,” Meredith Pochardt, executive director of the Takshanuk Watershed Council, said Wednesday.
Using mark-recapture technology, the council has been estimating the eulachon return to the Chilkoot River since 2010. This year’s run of 1.8 million of the smelt-like fish compares to 300,000 last year and a high return of 12.6 million in 2011.
“It’s a normal year compared to last year,” said Chilkoot tribal member Tim Ackerman, who said he was encouraged by the return to the Chilkat, where fishing opportunity has been limited for about eight years.
“It was plugged. You should have seen it…We haven’t been able to fish much on this side,” as eulachon schools have appeared to be using the far (west) side of the river, he said.
“For some reason, this year, there seems to be more on the close side of the river,” Ackerman said. One fisherman even witnessed a king salmon chasing a eulachon near Jones Point, he said. “He was easy to follow. He was leaving a wake wherever he went. That’s a good sign.”
Ackerman, who joined others during about four days of good fishing last week on the Chilkoot River, said he netted about 35 gallons of eulachon that he’ll be smoking and freezing as well as sharing with friends in Juneau and in Whitehorse, Champagne and Haines Junction, Y.T.
Harvest was big enough to fill several oil-rendering pits near 4 Mile and in Klukwan, Ackerman said.
TWC’s Pochardt said the relative size of a eulachon return in upper Lynn Canal is difficult to gauge as all the fish above Berners Bay are believed to be the same genetic stock and schools of fish branch off to a number of rivers including Chilkoot, Chilkat, Katzehin, Ferebee and Skagway’s Taiya River, perhaps depending on localized conditions.
“Without a regional study, it’s hard to say,” she said.
John McDermott, who holds a fisheries biology degree and has lived in Skagway 45 years, said the eulachon run into the Taiya River near the old Dyea townsite started April 21 and was strong for about three days. “The gulls are still finding them, but they’re doing a lot of looking,” he said Monday.
Haines fishermen last year speculated that Chilkoot-bound fish spawned instead in the Taiya.
“Last year’s (return to the Taiya) was bigger but it was still pretty decent for the first few days. It was a short run,” McDermott said.
Fisherman Ackerman said herring moved into the area about two weeks ago, with four to five days of spawning activity compared to about 12 hours last year. Besides Mud Bay, spawning was seen on the north side of Pyramid Island.
Ackerman said he takes it as a good sign when fish are seen in places they haven’t been seen before. “As the biomass gets bigger, we think they have to spread out.”