Sitka Fishing Report: September 9, 2019
We get calls constantly regarding the regulations for the upcoming season. Of special interest are the king salmon and halibut regulations. Both species are managed based on forecast abundance for the coming season. This is the right way to manage fish, but it does mean waiting for data that will establish sustainable harvest levels.
The International Pacific Halibut Commission will hold their interim meeting in late November. At that time, the projections for 2019 will be made public as will the catch information from 2018. For anyone interested, you can listen online to the meeting online. To register for the webinar go to: https://www.iphc.int/venues/details/94th-session-of-the-iphc-interim-meeting-im094 .
If listening in takes up too much time and is too much information, you can count on us to distill the data in our next newsletter. We should be able to take a good guess at regulations at that time, but the official regulations will come out after the North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting in February.
As for king salmon, historically we’ve had to wait until April 1 to know the abundance index and the regulations for the coming year. There is a change in estimating abundance which may help us get an earlier fix on regulations. We’ll let you know as soon as we know.
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