Fraser Sockeye 2025

No commercial fishing. Just the FN.

I listened to the Fraser Panel meeting this afternoon and they're implementing a small commercial fishery. 80k for Washington and 80k for BC. Seine and troll.

I'll be honest that I don't know all the ins and outs of getting boats on the water but the proposal was from Aug 9 00:01 to Aug 11
 
They also said that most of the allowable catch for the forecasted late fish will go to FN in river fisheries, so pray the late fish show up in droves if there is hope for a rec opening.
 
I listened to the Fraser Panel meeting this afternoon and they're implementing a small commercial fishery. 80k for Washington and 80k for BC. Seine and troll.

I'll be honest that I don't know all the ins and outs of getting boats on the water but the proposal was from Aug 9 00:01 to Aug 11

DFO cancelled the Canadian commercial fishery
 

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Here’s a graph showing the cumulative passage of sockeye going up the Fraser from 1977 to 2025. The graph counts up to August 8th. Just to give everyone a realistic idea of how this run is going. 2025 is the black line on the graph.

If you go to this website you can see all the data for yourself and play around with it to see what’s actually going on.

 
15,000 sockeye in the San Juan seine test yesterday. Hearing the abundance of sockeye up and down the Johnstone strait is unprecedented at this time of the year. Looking like one of the biggest biggest sockeye runs of all time happening on the Fraser
 
To: The Globe and Mail
Aug 11, 2025 Re: The Sockeye Salmon debacle or miracle on the
Fraser River
Dear Editor, There is an unprecedented abundance of returning sockeye salmon on this Fraser River cycle that is still underestimated by DFO who cancelled the all-citizen fishery for Canada that was sanctioned by the governing
body Pacific Salmon Commission (PSC). The problem is not native fishing, who do have a priority, it's the exclusion of all other stakeholders whose share
can't possibly be zero on a run of this magnitude. The DFO dragged their feet opening the FSC fishing in July while record test fishing results were piling in. The native fishing fleet is shrinking like the commercial fleet, so they need more time to access their Section 35 fish. That
being said, they are fishing every day in the river now. Fishing is crazy good. Historically, commercial would fish Tuesday and Wednesday and the Native fishing would
have the rest of the week. DO has no plan to manage this extraordinary abundance of salmon. They keep using weak reasoning to keep fishing closed for sport, commercial and Native economic opportunity. Reasoning that doesn't match the reality of this run. They can't move off a very weak preseason forecast to what is actually happening real-time on the Fraser River. They probably have only the next 4-6 days to turn these poor management models around and make a commonsense decision. No matter how they manage it, there is far more fish than they ever could have
anticipated. Allowing millions of surplus fish to the spawning grounds does not lead to future good returns, its called over- spawning. Potentially 150 million pounds of healthy protein
will be washed onto the riverbanks and left to rot. As of August 11th, we can only buy legally caught sockeye from American fisherman catching Canadian fish as their
fishery was sanctioned by the PSC. Elbows up! What about food security being lost in these
poor management decisions? Fraser River commercial fishing families have not fished
the Fraser River for 6 years. We may never see a sockeye run of this extraordinary
magnitude again in our lifetime.
Paul and Lynette Kershaw
Area E And D Gillnet Harvester
Ma and Pa Fishing Family
Ladner, BC
604-209-6677 wildsalmon@telus.net
 
Correct.

What ever happened in the Pacific these last years was exceptionally kind to the 2021 brood, and there should be plenty to go around.

The question/discussion was what would a sockeye opening look like with all the area closures in front of the Fraser? Will Gower be the sockeye hotspot, or Thrasher or?
Last sockeye opening I fished in Area 29 was the run with 30 million fish. Sandheads to Pt Grey was full of hundreds of boats - sporties and huge commercial seiners. I expect there would be hundreds of sport fishing boats like there are every Sept. 1 at Sandheads.
 
DFO....at its finest....the problem is those that work there now have NO practical fisheries knowledge...completely clueless as to how the real world works and the hard working everyday people suffer for it. I'm no commercial fisherman, but god damn theyve suffered just like us and deserve a huge bonus like this now more than ever...but DFO as usual gets in the way.
 
DFO has some hidden agenda from higher up or for political reasons. Only real explanation for incompetence of ignoring the reality of the huge test fishing showing that these fish are coming in huge numbers, plus the already huge numbers that have gone up the river already.


Just speculation but possibly because they are buying back commercial salmon licenses and don’t want the price spiking up, could be one of the hidden agenda reasons. I’m sure there would be a few other reasons too.
 
You can look at the testing from 2014. Looking similar to that, maybe better, maybe worse. We’ll see if the test numbers keep climbing.

either way it’s big! 18.9 million sockeye in 2014.
 

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