The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is predicting a commercial catch of about 179 million salmon this year, which would be a big jump from last year's harvest of 127 million.
A greater abundance of pink salmon will drive the larger catch, the department says.
See the 2013 forecast here.
Give me a few beers, a map, a calculator, and BobbyT's creative writing ability and I could do better than ADFG in about 45 min.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about that. Look at page 43 to 47 of the 2013 forecast. Fairly interesting, there are some favorable trends among their forecast going back to 1970.
ReplyDeleteWho is BobbyT? Sounds like a real Richard Bach.
I'll believe it after the season's over and the real numbers are in. Seen too many bad guesses by the Dept. to put much faith in pre-season forecasts.
ReplyDeleteStill going fishing, and we'll catch whatever is there.
I agree with you there. It would be interesting to see the same graphs by area. I doubt we would see such trends by area.
ReplyDeleteWriter 2
Should we all run out and buy thousands of dollars worth of gear to get ready for that "Larger salmon haul" the boys are predicting? Not!
ReplyDeleteWeather always plays a factor on fishing, esp. with all the "summer storm" now a days
ReplyDeleteReal fishermen laugh @ "weather"!
ReplyDeleteYeah, yeah, yeah. Any real Alaskan will know that a big bunch of those predicted salmon will be Humpies for the canned market which is too expensive for the common poor folks in Rural Alaska. Another big bunch of those predicted salmon will be BB sockeye, yet even more expensive in the can.
ReplyDeleteAlaskans need salmon for subsistence, especially the famed, world reknown Alaska Wild King. In the end, that's what USE TO FEED a great deal of poor people in Western Alaska and all along the Yukon River and up into Canada.
Canned Humpies are for the working class people who can't afford the better cut of canned sockeye.
Alaska needs to produce the Salmon to feed the people.
"Alaska needs to produce the Salmon to feed the people."
ReplyDeleteThe summer chum salmon run in Western Alaska is being ignored. The salmon use to come in hundreds during the month of June. That was the best month to process the salmon through the native preferred drying method. No longer can this happen.
It was that pollock season out in the Bering Sea that killed them off which gave the poor people the CDQ program except that the CDQ program went back out to the sea to continue killing off salmon as Bycatch. Millions of dollars, IFQs, LLCs. Holding their cards close to their chests.
The CDQs need to produce Salmon at historic levels for Western Alaska. I'm sure that was the underlying intent of that public money in the first place.
The CDQs in Alaska needs to produce Salmon for their poor people in Western Alaska.
I predict that Bristol Bay and the Cook Inlet will have lots of sockeye returning to spawn.
ReplyDeleteI worry that the Pilgrim River north of Nome might not provide enough sockeye for the subsistence needs of all the resource users like what did happen last summer. This summer is the last chance before the crash.
The Pilgrim River Kings are going to be gone soon. Escapement of 44 two summers in a row a couple of years back. Extinct. No Kings for the little rivers in Norton Sound. When numbers get that low, fishing for other salmon species are suppose to be strictly regulated in order for the escapement of any fish on the Stocks of Concern List.
The King Salmon returns are weak in the Fish River east of Nome where sits the little town of White Mountain as refered to in Johnny Horton's sound "North to Alaska".
ReplyDeleteThe King Salmon returns are getting weaker and weaker for the rivers around Unalakleet.
Ignoring the facts while slinging the bull.
And the Grandmothers are crying because they have to break out the hammer to pound dried humpy and beat a piece to softness for their toothless mouths with dentures that don't fit right because of........
Compound the problems, follow the money trails and start demanding accountability and fairness for the poor people living in Western Alaska.
The Grandmas are crying
ReplyDeletefor their lost culture
The Grandmas are crying
for their lost tradition
The Grandmas are crying
for their lost children
The Grandmas are crying
because nobody will
take out the overflowing
honeybucket
The Grandmas are crying
because nobody will get
clean water to drink
The Grandmas are crying
because good food is
getting hard to come by
The Grandmas are crying
because their bully leaders
are telling them to talk
about "Non Salmon Fish" at
the Regional Conference
The Grandmas are crying
for more Salmon to
feed themselves
and their children
The Grandmas are dying
and taking their knowledge
with them