King Salmon Extension

[ata]

Heads Up!

ADFG has just announced a one-day extension for the Southeast troll fishery. We now close at 11:59pm Sunday August 17th. Thanks to all of you who helped by calling me with data and observations - consider your efforts a success!

Fish On...

Dale
ATA

[Salty]

Dale could you please protest this decision to extend the season into a predicted 30 knot southeaster. It is a highly allocative decision favoring larger vessels. I have heard numerous bitter complaints.

[ata]

Hi Eric..

Your post here is the only negative comment I've received after days of gathering information from boats of all sizes from Dixon Entrance to Yakutat. The weather is really unfortunate, which is why I started working early this morning with ADFG to get a second extension. Sure enough, the weather looks grim again tomorrow - so ADFG has committed to review the data and other conditions in the morning. There aren't that many fish for this second opening, so ADFG has to be careful since there are some boats catching in most all areas. Day by day is the only way for them to go at this point.

My rationale to push for extra days was that it is much easier for the department to leave us open based on a low catch rate that's affected by weather than to close and re-open the fleet on a couple thousand fish. We've seen that happen recently. It's important that we get the quota in any year, but this year is particularly important since the Southeast and B.C. quotas are lower than they should be and there is high likelihood that the upriver brights will be over-escaped. What we've seen with the brights is that over-escapement leads to less production, which hurts all West Coast fishermen.

A good coho catch rate complicates it further - we don't want the fleet to lose out by having to come in and offload early, especially since all the rain is probably going to entice those fish to the rivers.

I'm sorry you and some of your friends are unhappy Eric. But you know that fisheries are rarely, if ever, closed for weather. And from what I've seen, boat size doesn't always correspond to who thinks it's fish-able - how would ADFG even decide which conditions are best to reopen the fishery? NOAA weather is often wrong and north/south or inside/outside can be night and day different. The read I have is that far more people would be upset if we hadn't tried for extensions.

Bottom line is that all I can do is work to provide opportunity for the fleet to fish and get what they are promised - then hope everyone can take advantage of the time. Again, I realize this opening has been very difficult for nearly the whole fleet, for a variety of reasons. Just hope that everyone's being smart out there, and that the weather lays down soon.

Safe travels...

Dale
ATA