Bristol Bay busts out

Bristol Bay commercial fishermen are netting some huge sockeye hauls, indicating the run could be peaking early this season.

Here's a rundown of recent daily production:

June 29 — 1.07 million fish
June 28 — 2.04 million fish
June 27 — 2.66 million fish
June 26 — 2.04 million fish
June 25 — 1.40 million fish

The fishing has been so hot that some buyers reportedly have placed their fleets on delivery limits to allow processing plants to catch up.

Through Sunday, the baywide catch totaled just shy of 10 million sockeye.

The state preseason forecast called for a harvest of 16.86 million sockeye for the year.

Cook Inlet's blessing — and frustration

Sockeye salmon are storming the Kenai River in big numbers. Which is a great thing, right?

It is if you can catch 'em.

Commercial fishermen are on delivery limits due to a processor capacity crunch.

"I am on the water right now with a 5,000-pound limit," one drift gillnetter told Deckboss this afternoon.

You can look, but don't catch

OK, we're not through June yet and already I'm hearing angry reports from Bristol Bay that some processors are struggling with the volume of fish and have placed gillnetters on delivery limits.

Catches exceeded 1 million sockeye on Friday and reached nearly 1.5 million on Saturday. The Department of Fish and Game hasn't posted the tally from Sunday.

Processors imposing limits year after year at Bristol Bay has been a sore point for fishermen, including Gov. Sarah Palin, whose family fishes commercially at Dillingham.

Despite the grumbling, however, we haven't seen appreciably more processors come into the bay.

Spokesmen for the industry contend existing processors have increased capacity over the years.

Yet here we are again on limits as valuable sockeye swim upriver, fishermen are saying.

More on this as I can get it.