From the gill-netters association
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.
-Ryan