Tag Archives: Southeast
Southeast gillnetters set a one-week record
Commercial fishermen caught a historic amount of fish this week in a district south of Juneau. Statistics are still preliminary, but catch numbers for gillnetters in the Taku River-Port Snettisham district will likely set a record for the first full week of July, according to reports from the Alaska Department of Fish & Game. ADF&G is reporting that fishermen in the district caught 170,000 chum salmon from July 2 to July 8, well above the previous record for the week of 134,000 set in 2013. So far, gillnetters have caught nearly five times as many chum salmon this year compared to last year. click here to read the story 12:25
Fishermen gear up for Southeast Dungeness crab season opening
19 year-old Jordan Lapeyri is busy pushing wheelbarrows piled high with little plastic bait jars up and down the South Harbor dock ramp. Lapeyri’s been fishing since the tender age of six. He’s done plenty of seining and gillnetting – but crabbing is something new. And he is in high spirits. “I’m feeling great! It’s gonna be fun. Good experience. I’ve never been crabbing before,” said Lapeyri. The captain of the Nolan Michael, a family friend, needed a deckhand. And Lapeyri needed a job. It was an easy match. “I wanted just to go seining but then he said he wanted to go try Dungy crabbing first before, for about 10 days, a couple weeks or so, and see how many crabs show up. If none show up, we’ll just leave. Get ready to go seining, put the seine net on,” Lapeyri said. click here to read the story 10:05
King fishery closed
Fisheries managers in Southcentral Alaska might still be wrestling with what to do about a weak return of king salmon to the Copper River, but their counterparts in Southeast Alaska have acted to protect kings returning to the Taku and Stikine Rivers. Officials with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game today announced commercial troll fisheries which catch most of the Southeast kings, or Chinook as they are otherwise called will close at midnight Sunday. Preseason forecasts for wild Chinook salmon production in Southeast Alaska are at an all-time low, a press release said. Typically, in the Taku and Stikine rivers, nearly half the run has entered the river by the end of the third week of May; however, record low numbers of Chinook salmon are being seen in-river this year. The Taku and Stikine are transboundary rivers, and Fish and Game runs research programs with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada to assess in-season run strength. Click here to read the story 13:13
Southeast Red and blue king crab fishery closed again
Warmer water in Southeast breeds larger king crab than other parts of the state. Southeast red kings can grow up to 24 pounds with a five foot leg span. But unlike places like Bristol Bay, Southeast’s population has not been abundant in recent years. In fact, there have been only two commercial openings in the last ten years, one in 2005 and one in 2011. That last opening saw a price of $10.66 per pound. The harvest that year was worth nearly $1.9 million at the docks. In 2005 it was $5.31 a pound. Audio, Read the rest here 10:27
ADF&G figures show commercial pinks slow to arrive in Southeast
Southeast Alaska fishermen have pulled in almost 10 million salmon so far this summer even as the pace of fishing remains below five-year averages, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. On Sunday, ADF&G reported seiners had hauled in 4.85 million pink salmon and 1.85 million chum salmon in the season to date. Gillnet boats brought in another 570,000 pinks and 1.5 million chum. While those figures sound impressive, Fish and Game has forecasted an excellent pink harvest of 58 million fish. Purse seining captures most of the pink salmon in Southeast. Read the rest here 14:46
