ADF&G 2023 Season Summary

/

The Alaska Department of Fish & Game has released its annual season summary for Bristol Bay. You can read the summary HERE.

Some takeaways are:

  • The final sockeye harvest was 40.55M fish, with an average weight of 5.54 pounds, for a total weight of 224.7M pounds. There were 2.0M pounds of chum caught.

  • All of the districts except Egegik were within 5% of the forecast (Egegik was 28% above).

  • There was minimal overescapement of sockeye. The Igushik escapement exceeded its upper goal by about 142,000 fish. The Nushagak district would have been about 800,000 fish over the old upper goal.

  • The average base price was $0.52/lb. The total base ex-vessel value for sockeye was $116M. This represents a 67% decline in base ex-vessel value from 2022, and a 53% decrease from 2021 (when a similar volume of sockeye were harvested).

  • The 2023 Chinook harvest was 9,512 fish Bay-wide, about a quarter of the 20-year average. The Nushagak sonar showed Chinook escapement of 31,499 fish, which is below the escapement goal range of 55,000 to 120,000.