June 16
Barkley Sound Roundtable met today.
Everything is going along as expected for this season so far. The escapement is slightly higher and/or earlier than would be expected - but at this stage of the run its impossible to tell if it's just early, they do seem to be blasting up the canal and into the river with the abundance of fresh water calling them in.
FN fisheries going well
Sport fishery going well, low participation but it will gradually increase as the weather improves.
Test boat says he thinks there was 50,000 inside and 30,000 outside on the days he was testing.
Escapement seems to be averaging around 4-5,000 a day, so it will have to start climbing dramatically if it's going to be a bigger than forecasted return.
Area D will open in the typical outside areas on Tuesday for 14 hours, 6am to 8pm.
Reminder to all to call your logbook in ASAP after the opening. If people forget to call in, or maybe they never set a net, then we get "charged" for that fish against our allocation for the next week and onwards until it actually gets reconciled against the correct logbook data. So it's really important to call in a zero catch if you filed a pretrip and didn't end up setting for any reason, or if you made a set and then broke down, etc. Always best to call in the days fishery ASAP, thanks.
-Ryan
June 23
The Barkley Sound Roundtable met this afternoon.
**Before I give the update, I need to remind everyone that they MUST call in their logbook catches or file their Elog report the day of the fishery. It's not good enough to wait until the morning, it makes it hard for us to ask the DFO to act quickly when they can turn around and point at the logbook numbers and say that they can't act because they don't know how much fish was caught. In our first fishery this year we had 118 boats fishing, but only had 80 call in their catch by Wednesday noon, and we are STILL waiting on 20 boats to call in and it is already Thursday afternoon. Please call in the catch report once you are in cell range as soon as possible after it closes. Thanks.**
Estimated catch for Area D from last week is 16,968 from 118 boats fishing.
Escapement as of Tuesday morning was 151,075 and escapement has continued strong yesterday and today as well.
The test boat estimates 80,000 fish in the canal outside of Ten Mile, and 25,000 inside of Ten Mile.
The approximate catch to date from all sectors is 60,000. The rec catch remains very low because the fish are just moving into the river too fast.
The run size has been upgraded from 400,000 to 550,000 adults. This is based on the amount of fish that have been seen in the entire system to date, but the expectation is tempered somewhat by the concern that the fish are most likely migrating early because of the ideal river conditions, and we may see a sharp cutoff in migration after the peak goes through.
Area D will open on Tuesday, June 28 for our regular 14 hour opening, 6am to 8pm in the traditional outside area. There is 13,000 TAC remaining for Area D at the new run size. If fishing is slow, then we probably wont catch it, and if fishing is good, then that means there is enough fish coming that the run is probably even larger than the upgrade. The table is (mostly)comfortable with this plan.
The Roundtable is going to have an extra meeting on Wednesday at 11am, to review what has happened over the weekend, what the test boat saw, how the seine fishery went, and what Area D caught (be sure to call in your logbook Tuesday night) The purpose of this extra meeting is to predict if the run size will be upgraded again on the official meeting Thursday afternoon. The reason we want to try and predict the upgrade early is because Area D cannot fish the outside area past June 30th in our efforts to protect Henderson Lake sockeye.
If the extra meeting on Wednesday predicts that there is (a)going to be another run upgrade and (b) there will be Area D TAC left over at the new run size, then we are going to try and plan another Area D opening SHORT NOTICE on THURSDAY, June 30th before the Henderson Closure comes into effect. This third opening is not a sure thing, I would say the chances of it happening are about 50:50, but you will be able to better predict it by the testing and the escapement as we go along. As we get closer, if things start to look worse, we may cancel the extra Wednesday meeting all together.
Any questions, comment below.
July 3
Area D Fishermen, there has been no meeting since Thursday, but the fish continue to pour through the counters. Escapement is over 370,000 now.
The purpose of this post is just to make sure everyone is aware that the advisors are trying hard to get an Area D opening as soon as possible - I do not know if we will succeed, and I do not know if/when it will be or how long, but we need everyone to be aware.
If we get something I will post it here right away, but nobody should be surprised if there is a short-notice opening sometime soon.
-Ryan
July 5
Barkley Roundtable met today at 2pm for an extra meeting.
Escapement is proceeding strong. Scale data is showing that a large percentage of the escapement is jacks, so they have adjusted the total adult escapement downward to 380,000 - which is still very strong, and a positive sign for 4 years from now.
Recreational fishing remains very slow, most have given up on sockeye and are thinking about Chinook.
FN fisheries have been good, but seem to have dropped off since Sunday. The FN fishermen still have lots of allocation to catch, and it seems doubtful they will catch it without another big push of fish into the river. They have been extended until Thursday.
Seine fishing has been mediocre. They have over 40,000 TAC to go, it seems unlikely that they will achieve it unless the fish start slowing down and schooling up somewhat. Seines have been extended until Thursday. They are currently fishing out to Pocahontas, but will move their outer boundary back to Bilton Pt starting at noon on Wednesday.
Area D has only 5,000 TAC to catch at the current run-size, and there will not be a run-size adjustment until the regular meeting on Thursday. However the table has agreed that Area D can fish into our share of the uncaught Recreational catch in the meantime - while we wait to see what the biologists do with the official run size. With our share of the Recreational catch, we have appox 18,000 pieces to go.
Area D will open Wednesday afternoon at 4pm, from Polly Pt to Pocahontas Pt, for 24 hours. There will be a regular roundtable meeting Thursday at 1pm, during our fishery. So there is a possibility of extension, depending on how the catches go, and depending on how the meeting goes.
Please call-in or elog your catch from before midnight ASAP after midnight so we have some data to work with at the meeting, thanks.
The Recreational fleet has asked if we could please leave some room between the scotchmen for passage. Sometime the nets get shingled in behind each other and it makes it very hard to get through.
-Ryan
