[6] West Coast Sockeye Score: Bristol Bay 30 Million, Redfish Lake 3

Sockeye runs this year have been all over the map, but the further north it was, the better off they were. Alaska's Bristol Bay saw a bang-up year, where one area, at Nushagak, saw the second largest harvest since 1883--just shy of 8 million fish. Nearly 30 million were caught in all the Bay this year.

Downstate, Prince William Sound's Copper River fishery nabbed nearly 2 million sockeye all by itself.

However, those runs on the southern edges of the sockeye's Pacific Coast turf are faring far worse, especially Canada's famed Fraser River run. In their latest press release, Canadian sockeye prognosticators painted a gloomy picture of this year's runs in the Fraser. Citing poor ocean conditions in 2005 as the likely culprit, they say this year's return is only showing about one-quarter of the strength they had originally estimated. At this point, it is unlikely that any commercial fisheries will take place in waters managed by the Pacific Salmon Commission's Fraser River Panel.

On Aug. 13, they downgraded the river's Early Summer-run to 120,000 fish, down from 150,000, which was down from their original estimate of nearly 700,000 socks.

Their summer run estimation has shrunk to 750,000 fish from 1.26 million and originally 3.4 million. The late-run sockeye prediction has been pegged at 504,000 with 227,000 more headed for the Birkenhead River, down from original estimates of 2.4 million late run.

In 2006, about 8.7 million sockeye returned to the Fraser, about half the preseason forecast that year.

The managers said ocean conditions off Vancouver Island were so poor in 2005 that federal researchers found juvenile coho growth the lowest on record. "Low growth rates in juvenile salmon are often associated with higher mortality rates due to predation by other fish," the noted in their Aug. 10 update.

Migrating sockeye found Fraser River temperatures only .5 degrees C higher than average by Aug. 9, with the expectation that it would decrease more than a full degree C by this week. Flows were about 9 percent above normal on Aug. 9, but had decreased from 4,200 cm/s to 3,800 cm/s by this week.

One bright note on the Fraser--nearly 20 million pinks are expected.

Further south on the Columbia, the sockeye run was small, but showed up pretty much as expected. State and tribal fish managers predicted a 27,000-fish run to the mouth of the river (6,600 Wenatchee, 21,000 Okanogan) and more than 24,000 were counted at Bonneville Dam. At Rock Island Dam, more than 25,000 were tallied before the Wenatchee fish turned west out of the mainstem. Further upstream at Wells Dam, 22,000 sockeye were counted, presumably heading for the Okanogan.

Last year about 37,000 sockeye returned to the Columbia, about half of 2005's numbers. In 2004, nearly 124,000 sockeye returned to the upper Columbia--the largest run since several big years in the mid-1980s.

By the middle of August, only three ESA-listed sockeye had made the 900-mile trek to the trap at IDFG's Sawtooth Hatchery, near Idaho's Redfish Lake, where managers had expected 50 to 100 to return this season. The stock is maintained by a captive broodstock program that some scientists say should by discontinued. By the end of July, more than 50 socks had been tallied at Lower Granite Dam, near the Idaho-Washington border, but still only about halfway to the lake.

In 2006, three sockeye returned to Redfish Lake. The average return over the past five years has been only 12 fish, but in 2000, more than 200 of them made it all the way home.

Seattle's own sockeye run into the Cedar River also sputtered this year, down to about a 60,000-fish level from last year's monster return of nearly 500,000 sockeye, about twice what managers had expected. This year's run is about half the size they had expected. -B. R.

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