How about this for a point.. we were fishing the line on the third opening. Which means furthest west in the canal that was open for gill net. We watched several sport boats fishing in front of us day after day. Since we had 3 to 4 hours between sets we would just sit and observe. never seen one sport boat catch a fish, meanwhile we were on our sets. When we were making 160 fish sets, all those fish just went right by the sport boats before we got em in a net. The fish were in the first 30 feet of water. The gill nets for that area are around 40ft deep. Fish are very sparse in the 30ft water column. These fish don't school up in big numbers unless they are holding somewhere. In which case our present conditions were cold high water, and they were not. Thats why we got the escapement so early. There was and is plenty of fish its just to catch those fish in current conditions with a rod and reel is extremely tough. Believe it or not.
Sockeye salmon are not predators they are prey and only bite when they are grouping up getting into a territorial behaviour. These are fish who hurl around in the ocean for survival and live primarily off zooplankton. These fish did not group up much this year. Which is really good for the run and really good for a lot of things. Sockeye is not a sport fishery as much as some people think it is. Yes its great to sport catch some sockeye but its a meat fishery even at that.
