"Fishermen in the Nushagak district, at least, have become more efficient in selecting their gear in recent years, which may be helping to boost the catch, he said.
The last two years we’ve had these really tremendous runs of two-ocean fish here in the Nushagak,” he said. “People probably saw fish going through their gear. I think there’s definitely been some learning going on.”"
They're just using smaller gill nets to catch more of the small fish. Lots of small fish is not an indicator of high productivity. In fact lots of small fish indicates a shortage of food. Alaska dumps a billion hatchery pink salmon into the ocean which makes for smaller wild salmon due to food competition.
The hot weather was brutal this year. I spent 3 weeks on the river and did not catch a single chinook, not even a jack. The river was 21C..