July 17, 2017
Fishermen in Bristol Bay are having one of the best seasons ever. Since my last update, over 25 million more scrumptious sockeye salmon have been caught by the Bristol Bay fleet, and they're still coming. This season has surpassed the preseason forecast and escapement goals for all river systems have been exceeded. This means the future of our fishery looks excellent!
After explaining in my last update how rare it is to harvest over a million fish in a single river system in one day, it happened a couple more times this season. We are all very surprised and grateful! There were multiple days when fishermen harvested over 3 million salmon in all the Bristol Bay river systems combined. This translates into over 15 million pounds of salmon in one day!
When high volumes of salmon are caught, processors must put the fishermen on catch limits, so they can keep up and make sure high standards are maintained for processed product. At the beginning of the fishing period, the processor tells each boat in its fleet how much fish they can catch, and that's all they will accept that period. It's a bit frustrating for the fishermen, who end up sitting around, while fish are jumping everywhere. While the size of this run is exceptional and a bit unprecedented, limits set by the processors is certainly something the fishermen will be talking about all winter.
Mike and the rest of the crew on the F/V Dr. Jack are doing well. They've had a few days hot enough to go swimming and have recorded some of the largest sets in Mike's fishing career. Many out of state fishermen have packed up and left, but this crew will stick around until there aren't any fish left to catch. The more fish we catch now, the better and more relaxed our winter will be.
In other fishy news, if you preordered our seafood, we will be sending out notice of the shipping date through this newsletter account. Sometimes these emails end up in junk or spam folders (especially if you use Gmail), so please make sure you flag them as not spam, or move them to a special folder, so you don't miss the announcement. We're still looking at a September delivery, but wanted to give you a heads up now, so you don't miss it. We always like to confirm you'll be in town when the delivery occurs, and request that each recipient sends confirmation back to us before we ship.
Thank you for choosing us to be your Alaska fishing family!
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