Go get 'em day for gillnetters. Deckboss photoThe Copper River fishery opens at 7 a.m. today for a 12-hour period, signifying what many will regard as the official start of a new Alaska salmon season.
Of course, gillnetters and trollers started stalking Chinook salmon at the Stikine and Taku rivers in Southeast on May 7.
But for Copper River connoisseurs, that doesn't count, right?
Anyway, Deckboss wishes the Copper River fleet a safe day and good fishing.
20 comments:
lets go 2012
Sea Poacher, must be one of those russian boys making it easier for enforcement to pick him out of the crowd.
I wonder how the tsunami debris is going to impact the flats. There could be some nasty action at night when you can't see it.
When I am traveling on this ship! But Tsunami????
I think the managers of the salmon resources are managing backwards. They always allow the commercial fishers first dips when they should monitor for escapement first, subsistence second and the excess, if any should go to the market. That's the model the Consitution of Alaska mandates and that's the only way to manage our salmon resources for sustainability.
What's the matter with a little Tsunami...like on the Flats in '64.
Sea Poacher's United!
Lisa's favorite Storm!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond
Dude with the management comment, you have no clue whatsoever how ADFG works. Small commercial openings actually act as testing opportunities to gauge the strength of the run. You would prefer to have overescapements push past commercial fishing areas never to be utilized? Go research how optimum escapement goals are designated and acheived through a myriad of management strategies. How come Alaskan runs are so strong compared to Outside? Because for the most part they are managed by scientific models, not by emotion as you would have it. Learn before you speak lest you show the world a fool.
I pity the fool!
"Alaskan runs are so strong compared to Outside?"??????
If that's the truth, then why is the Yukon River crashing - both summer chum and the king salmon?
I guess ADF&G's "myriad of management strategies." work somewhere in Alaska. It sure isn't working up here in the Norton Sound.
It's a case of who is fooling who.
let's not forget the taku and chilkat rivers here in sotheast,the spring king salmon run on both these rivers are so low it seems to me that the new fish and games models for these rivers are working about just as well for these rivers as they worked for the herring sac roe fisherie!lets start telling the truth adfg!!!
On a positive note:
What are they getting for price $$$$$....?????
Sockeyes????....$$$$
Kings????......$$$$
Well, pretty good opener...
Grand Total, 1,059 Kings, 154,686 Sockeye.
Tally that up next to Taku and the Chilkat politica science majors in S.E?
ADF&G?
Always Depending on Fiction in Genetics!
If you quit creek robbing you would have more salmon. Kill the chicken, no more eggs.
155,000 reds caught and killed before they reach the rivers to spawn is bound to hurt future runs.
Creek robbers are happy to get away with 2 or 3 so I don't see the detrimental effect for so few robbed compare to the catch allowed to commercial fishermen.
I think the problem with Fish and Game management of the salmon resources is that they fill the field up with technicians(intern program) who don't know what's biting them in their behinds until the 'real' biologist graces the camp with their once a week appearance to bring the kids ice cream. It's so much more comfortable in the office working 8-4, Monday thru Friday. We've lost the culture of the 'real research biologists' about 15 years ago so it's really hard to believe the data that's been coming out of the field lately.
"155,000 reds caught and killed before they reach the rivers to spawn is bound to hurt future runs."
Why? Not catching them could just as easily kill the run from over escapement.
By creek robbers I guess you mean sport fishermen up river. They may only be allowed to catch two of three but they catch and release many more a day.
Catch and release puts a lot of stress on fish that are lucky if they had the strength to make it all the way up the copper. To ask the few kings that make it that far to burn up the rest of their fat reserves being caught and released 10 times a day for some guys "sport" is in my opinion a very poor use of a resource.
Fishing in a spawning ground is generally a bad decision as only a small percentage of the fish actually make it that far. Those that do should not be disturbed by hundreds of people starved for entertainment running around in chest waders blaming the commercial guys for killing all the fish.
Salmon is one of the greatest foods on earth and we sure aren't making it more available to the public by letting people catch and release them so many times that they are to stressed to spawn just for sport. Go play bass hunter on your wee if you have to
Pity the fool that thinks catching 155k on the first opener is going to hurt the run. Those guys are fishing in the ocean and it just indicates the large size of the run that is returning.
If you think that creek robbers are sastisfied with 2 or 3 fish you are unbelievably lost. I'm talking about the unreported and unaccounted for: commercial, subsistence, and sport robbers.
We're talking about potentially ten's of thousands of fish that are illegally taken by seiners grabbing a quick roundhaul, "subsistence" users filling their freezer, their friends freezer, relatives freezers, "trading stock", and so on, just to have a lot of it thrown out as freezer burned the next season, and the catch, injure, and release crowd.
On topic here, that would translate to the upriver subsistence abuses, and the sport king fisheries that keys in "backbouncing" through king salmon spawning beds. Seiners of course don't fish the flats.
In the Y/K systems, who is surveying all the unreported subsistence take throughout the whole drainages? Shhhh...
In closing, good job Copper drifters!!!
The over escapement fear is always used by some guys to justify over harvest. That model has resulted in depletions in SE, Kodiak, and now PWS. Over escapement may reduce recruitment but escapement levels continue to rise up to a point where the system cannot handle the level. But that level is magnitudes above optimum levels. It is when you fail to achieve lower levels of escapement, which has been occurring in the copper for several years that you have a problem. A big problem! The whole purpose of restricting the inside Copper river fishery to shorter and fewer openings early in the season was to allow for the Chinook to get into the river. But where are theChinooks? Won't be long now. Chinooks will go the way of the Atlantic Cod.
no the way of the taku chilkat and stkine river systems!!!
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