Different Kinds of Commercial Salmon Fishing

Pacific Son is a Troller
Last Saturday we anchored in Leesoffskaia Bay, which is just outside of the Deep Inlet fishery. The Deep Inlet area is open to all different kinds of salmon fishing gear on a rotating basis, which means each kind of commercial salmon fishery gets its day to fish there. On our way into the bay there were Gill Netters fishing and on our way out on Sunday it was Purse Seiners so I got to see both of these fisheries with their gear in the water. Here’s my layman’s definition of the different kinds of commercial salmon fisheries.

Troll Caught Salmon is the only “line caught” commercial salmon. We use a line and a hook while other commercial fishing is done with a net. We have a large pole off both sides of the boat that enable us to have multiple fishing lines in the water at the same time (the lines are attached to different parts of the poles that keep the lines separated in the water to avoid tangling them). We are allowed to fish 2 lines on each side (3 in certain areas). Each line has a lead at the bottom (to weigh it down) and is marked every 2 fathoms (a fathom is 6 feet). For King salmon (also called Chinook – prized by fine dining restaurants) we are putting a lure every 2 marks (every 4 fathoms) but when we start Coho (Silver) fishing in July we will put a lure on every mark. We are currently running the inside lines down to 20 fathoms and the outside lines to 16F = 9 hooks on each side of the boat. We “troll” by dragging these lines through the water at a slow speed (usually around 2.5 knots). When we get a hit we turn the hydraulics on and bring each hook up and clear the fish off before resetting the gear and sending it back down.


Gill Netting is when a boat sets a net in the water with floats attached along the top and to each end (or sometimes one end stays on the boat) and lets it “soak” for a time (could be 20 minutes, could be hours). The idea is to capture the school of fish in the net as they swim through so often they will “cork” an opening to a bay or stream by setting the net across the opening. The size of the net opening is determined by the fish you are targeting as you want the little fish to swim through but the bigger fish you are targeting to get their gills stuck in the net. After “soaking” one end of the net is pulled aboard the boat by a hydraulic drum and the fish are hand picked out of the net as it comes up on deck (the net comes aboard only as fast as the crew can pick the fish out). Today, this fishery is mostly used to fish for Chum (also called Dog or Keta) and Sockeye (Red) salmon.



Purse Seining is also net fishing but it is more of a scooping process. A seiner will carry a skiff to the fishing grounds and then the skiff will run the net away from the seiner. The 2 boats will then soak the net between them for about 20 minutes and then the skiff will loop back to the seiner, closing up the net. The bottom of the net is synched up and they will haul the resulting “purse” up with a crane. The net will have scooped up everything that was in the area so once on deck it is dumped out and the fish are separated into keepers and by-catch. Seiners target Pink (also called Humpy) and Chum (Dog) salmon but they capture everything so there is a lot of by-catch (other salmon, other kinds of fish, other sea life like octopus, jelly fish, etc.).

Comments

  1. UnknownJune 16, 2018 at 10:41 PM

    Hey thanks for the lesson, especially which fish each type of boat goes for. And it's great to have a good complete picture of Pacific Son.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2022 Season Begins and a 2021 Recap

Image
A Good Morning in Haines Alaska  We left our beautiful mountains-to-sea town of Haines, Alaska this morning and headed out for our 20 22  summer fishing season. It was a glorious sunny  morning and the all-day trip to Juneau was smooth and  lovely.  Both Doug and I were looking forward to  getting back out on the water and pulling up those big  King and Coho salmon – especially after the 2021  season we had.  2021 Recap 2021 was a good year for most trollers – there were fish to be caught and a nice price point per pound. Unfortunately, Doug hurt his ribs right before the start of the season so we didn’t fish as hard as we usually do. We started late and had to take a couple weeks off mid-summer for healing. It was a different kind of season for us but still delivered spectacular sights and long days of wilderness fishing. We often spend much of the season fishing in the Gulf of Alaska – from Cross Sound south along Baranof Island. Due to our adjustments for the season we chose to stay
Read more

End of the Summer Season

Image
Coho salmon were not abundant this year. Other stocks did ok, and the local sockeye run was a good one, but coho numbers are what we rely on as trollers, so this was not a good year for us. In fact, Alaska Fish and Game stated that this years' coho run was the third worst in the last 40 years with a harvest 42% below the 20 year average!  We spent our last week of fishing in northern Chatham Strait. We didn't catch many fish but we had some really nice wildlife viewing. Again we had a group of whales bubble net or lunge feeding near us for a couple of days and that is always a spectacular site. There is also a really great sockeye stream in the bay we were anchoring in that draws lots of bears. It’s the classic Alaska photo op. There’s a beautiful waterfall that then streams down into the cove. At high tide the salmon can jump up the waterfall with some amount of effort, at low tide they get stranded in the rocks down below. A feast for the bears! One morning there were four be
Read more

Alaska Homesteading Update #3

Image
Our little guest cabin now has quite a sweet outdoor space with its fire pit, benches, serving counter and cowboy hot tub (heated by the fire pit). It’s very inviting and we spend as much time there as we can.  The house itself got new stain and an arctic entryway, which helped during the cold winters that we spent here during Covid isolation times.  We bought a tractor last fall and a mill this spring so we could use the trees on the property to make our improvements.  Doug dropped a few trees and milled a bunch of lumber while I was recuperating with my broken arm. We are now in the process of building a pole barn for all of our equipment. Next spring we will work on an addition to the house. It’s really fun to watch our little Homestead grow!
Read more