Port Moller Update: Largest Catch of the Season Saturday

Saturday was the 5th full day of fishing for the ongoing Port Moller Test Fishery, which is run for 30 days in June and July with the goal of giving fishermen and other a sense of the sockeye resource that’s 6 to 9-day’s away from Bristol Bay’s inshore fishing districts. 241-sockeye have been caught in the test fishery through Saturday with 133 of those fish taken from the 5 1/8th inch mesh and 108 sockeye from the 4 ½ inch mesh. 67 were sockeye were caught on Saturday with the largest catch of 23 fish occurring at station 2, which is the innermost station. The catch at station 4 was 7 sockeye and the catch at station 6 was 10 fish. Station 8 featured a sockeye catch of 16 fish and 11 sockeye were taken at station 11. Saturday’s fishing effort produced a daily replacement index number of 14, which pushes the cumulative replacement index number up to 49. The daily traditional index number from Saturday was 24, which pushes the cumulative traditional index number up to 119. That’s above the average cumulative traditional index number dating back to 1990. The average is 95 and the lowest on record is 21. The cumulative traditional index number of 119 is well below the maximum every recorded, which was the 308 recorded last year. There are 6 examples in the last 25 years of a cumulative index number exceeding this year’s 119 for the 14th of June. One item of interest from Saturday’s catch at the Port Moller Test Fishery is that of the 23 sockeye taken at station 2 all but 2 were taken from the 4 ½ inch mesh panels in the test net.