Chum caught by Squaxin Fishermen during a Totten Inlet Drift – November 2013.

The week-45 South Sound chum test fishery at Apple Cove Point provided decent catches yesterday but nothing spectacular. They caught at total of 902 chum (plus 10 coho and 2 immature Chinook) in six sets which compares pretty well with historic week-45 catches. The tides were not ideal, ebbing during all but the first set. The proportion of females in their sample rose this week to 59%. The overall catch appeared to have more small fish, scales samples had not been delivered to the WDFW scale lab in time enough to be shared at this time, so we won’t have the age distribution. Many of the fish were still quite bright.

Models supported an update to the South Sound chum runsize ranging from 550,000 to 750,000.

Non-treaty fleet to date has caught 148,648 fish.  This week Non-treaty had 63 Purse Seine boats with a total of 25,000 chum caught.  Two thirds of the fleet was in area 10.   

Total Tribal catch to date is  94,855 fish. Tribal catches appeared to be lower this week for the northern tribes.  Squaxin Island Tribe was the only tribe to be showing a substantial increase in catches.  Squaxin total catch as of November 7th is 32,405 chum.  

Based on the Week 45 models and regional catch data the Tribes and WDFW agreed to update the runsize to 600,000.  This is down 60,000 from Week 44.  This decrease in runsize adjusts the Treaty share to 268,959 and the Non-Treaty Commercial hare to 261,476. Leaving approximately 174K left of Treaty and 112K left for Non-treaty commercial to harvest.