Abundance
2011-09-27 23:26:17
Did anybody else notice the major increase of fish being caught per boat toward the end? The graph on fish and games website shows this to be abnormal. They were some tough fellows that fished the last week, but it seems to have paid off for them. I wonder why they were so late. It seems like they were late last year to. I wonder if this is a trend. I looked at the harvest timings for the last few years from all over the state, and this year showed a few weeks later run times for almost all of the fish. I hope that it is just a natural thing, part of some normal cycle that we haven't previously identified. just the same, I really do think that we are being shut down too early. What would it hurt to let us fish cohos clear into November? Why do they even have a season for cohos? They don't for chums and pinks. They have to know that these fish aren't just coming in in June and milling around until October. They come in from the Gulf and shoot up a creek, week after week. Over-fishing isn't really an issue here. The fish we are catching now haven't been fished yet. I even wonder somewhat if that might be part of why we are seeing such late fish. They have us target summer runs, and let the falls runs get off free. Over decades, that could have an effect of tilting the population towards late fish. At least they should expand the areas around hatcheries for us. I hear that once the late, late run gets up into where we can fish in Neets Bay for example, they no longer bite. And you have to contend with net fisherman. I don't begrudge those fish to the netters, but I think that it would be nice to have a fair shot at them before they get there. I did see proposed regulations that directly addressed these concerns, and I am optimistic. Maybe they will say no, but who knows, there is a good chance that they will say yes. Oh well, I got this bit off of my chest. I hope I didn't sound too incoherent, I'm still getting used to putting my thoughts into this medium. Whats your opinion?
kalitan97828
2011-09-28 20:07:24
You are right on in feeling that the 20th of September is an antiquated cut off date for trolling. One gillnetter I know had 400 coho and and equal number of chum in Lynn Canal last week ( I believe the fishery was open for three days.) This week was slower with about a hundred of each.
Sitka and Neets Bay are two areas with late run cohoes. NSRAA has not yet established a release site for the cohoes being produced by the new hatchery which will be gearing up over the next several years. The potential for a good fall harvest is tremendous but as you pointed out, they do not bite well as they near the release area. I suggest that changing the season closure be an ATA project. I suspect it would require Board of Fish approval so it is several years away as I think we have missed any opportunity to make such a proposal in this round.
Thanks for bring the subject up lets get started now.
captain58
2011-09-29 20:42:32
I don't know if this is relevant or not, back in the 80s I was catching bright Cohos out in Cold Bay. So maybe the cut off date is a bit arbitrary.
Salty
2011-09-30 04:48:33
A little history and biology both seem appropriate here. For many years the end of the summer salmon season was set by the processors in conjunction with the feds during territorial days after the last, or nearly the last of the fall chums which was about the 20th of September. The canneries wanted to close up and so coho trolling was closed. Then for many years we had winter kings opening on the 1st of October so a 10 day closure didnt seem that onerous.
Over the years the winter king opening has been moved to10/11. ATA has proposed leaving the coho season open until 10/01 and has won the right for the dept to extend the season in the region or sub areas if the coho abundance warrents.
On the biology, it is important to undersand that the SE seine fishery is basically opened or closed based on pink salmon abundance. This has actuallly worked great and generally pink and silver abundance in any given year are similar since they outmigrate at the same time and spend the same time at sea.
Salty
2011-09-30 04:59:26
But. It means that over time you could reasonably expect that early returning coho would be hit hard by the seine,troll, and gillnet fisheries while the later returning stocks would get less pressure.
But, there are several thousand creeks and tributaries in SE with coho and every one has a unique life cycle and migration so it is hard to generalize.
Personally I believe we are hammering the heck out of the early coho stocks and underfishing the late ones.
Abundance
2011-09-30 16:43:34
That kind of how I feel myself. I am really not against conserving the cohos, I just think that it should be in a way that works. I don't think that an arbitrary cut-off date is sensible. I don't think that a season is necessary. Perhaps lot of smaller closures, spread across the summer, so as to let a little pressure off of individual runs. I'm not sure that is desirable thing, but at least I can see it having some tangible benefit to the fish. Late cohos are so much bigger and nicer than summer ones too. Its not much different than plugging a boat with kings when you get into them. They are a valuable resource to chase after. For some reason, I think that we trollers should be targeting fish when they are worth the most. I think our king season should be the winter and spring, when we are all that's on the market. A win for increasing number of trollers that fish year round and the netters who have to compete with us in the summer. I'm going shrimping tomorrow, so I might not be in this conversation for a while.
Abundance
2011-10-08 06:28:00
Perhaps I've talked enough on this subject, but how many people catch cohos while fishing winter kings? I've never fished before November because of October shrimping, but I know some of the stories that I've heard. My grandfather used to say that during the old October 1st winter king opening, fishing by Ketchikan, he would catch over a hundred cohos a day on king gear, turning them all loose. I have heard other sickeningly good stories as well. i can imagine that the fishing gets pretty slow eventually, but I know that even here in the Klawock River I've seen bright cohos running into the river in the middle of November. I talked to a hatchery guy once who said the last place he worked had cohos coming in until January. I am uncertain as to the truthfulness of that, but it would would be good information to have. I can see why the plants wouldn't have wanted to deal with the small trickle of cohos coming in during the late season, but that isn't really the case anymore. Why couldn't we fish them along with winter kings? can you imagine what a winter coho would go for? A huge October coho flown out fresh with the kings? I would like to try it anyway.
Salty
2011-10-08 15:28:39
I used to catch a few when it opened Oct. 1, particularly in Chatham, but they were almost all blush and some were positively ugly.
For many years I have only winter fished in the Sitka Sound area. I catch one or two in October. What we often see, which is a problem unless you adapt is lots of outmigrating coho out by the Winter line in October.