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[wildmanyeah]

returning to the topic;

Escapement past mission is now over 9 million as of yesterday. Looks like 2023 will be an unplanned experiment on do high escapements result in high returns in the following cycle or is it the other way around.

Yesterday I walked the Harrison from Kilby Park to the mouth, casting flies and spoons. Didn't have a strike. Didn't see a pink. Very low effort underway there. Where are all the fish?

I don't think the lower fraser is gonna have a good return of pinks, you were right i think most of these fish are distanced north of hells gate. The floods did have a big impact.

I am saying this because every pink i have caught has been in dime bright quality, where previous two cycles i was into big humpies. This year i swore i caught all females' and half ended up to be males.  Only a couple had bit of a hump.  Seems like there is not much of later run.

so was the return a bit "early" this year or is the later timed component of the run just very poor, kinda seems like the latter.

you were bang on with lots of your assessment Ralph

so ill leave you with this

“For there is assuredly nothing dearer to a man than wisdom, and though age takes away all else, it undoubtedly brings us that.”

[Stratocaster]

I don't think the lower fraser is gonna have a good return of pinks, you were right i think most of these fish are distanced north of hells gate. The floods did have a big impact.

I am saying this because every pink i have caught has been in dime bright quality, where previous two cycles i was into big humpies. This year i swore i caught all females' and half ended up to be males.  Only a couple had bit of a hump.  Seems like there is not much of later run.

so was the return a bit "early" this year or is the later timed component of the run just very poor, kinda seems like the latter.

you were bang on with lots of your assessment Ralph

so ill leave you with this

“For there is assuredly nothing dearer to a man than wisdom, and though age takes away all else, it undoubtedly brings us that.”

Usually in a pink year, the Vedder is plugged with pinks in the lower and carcasses begin to pile up on the shore.  But not this year. 

[bigblockfox]

lots of pinks passing by on the thompson when i was there. packs of 6 to 10 fish every 10 mins or so.

[fic]

I am noticing lower number of Vedder pinks as well.  It's only open for another 8 days, so that will help the later pinks that come in.  I haven't seen many big schools of Springs yet like last year either.   The Springs I have seen were schooling with the pinks and stick out a lot.

[canoeboy]

I went to the vedder on Tuesday in search or springs or coho and managed to land 14 pinks and lots one what I hope was a coho but who knows. Definitely not as many pinks as I've seen there before but there were quite a few. I also stopped at the confluence of the sumas and vedder and say 100s and 100s of fish swimming back and forth from there to the bridge. Maybe the water in the canal is too clear and low?

[Darko]

I don't know man but today I must have seen a thousand pinks swim by within 2 hours in the pool I was fishing mid river. Not exaggerating.

[Rodney]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_2zRIBnXpo

We went out on the last day of the opening between Hope and Mission.

[Fish Assassin]

That is a great photo

[RalphH]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_2zRIBnXpo

We went out on the last day of the opening between Hope and Mission.

I recall being told by a number people not to fish for pinks above Mission as the fish were all too dark and not worth catching. They were right! What boots those 2 are!

[RalphH]

I don't think the lower fraser is gonna have a good return of pinks, you were right i think most of these fish are distanced north of hells gate. The floods did have a big impact.

I am saying this because every pink i have caught has been in dime bright quality, where previous two cycles i was into big humpies. This year i swore i caught all females' and half ended up to be males.  Only a couple had bit of a hump.  Seems like there is not much of later run.

so was the return a bit "early" this year or is the later timed component of the run just very poor, kinda seems like the latter.

you were bang on with lots of your assessment Ralph

so ill leave you with this

“For there is assuredly nothing dearer to a man than wisdom, and though age takes away all else, it undoubtedly brings us that.”

Thanks. Very nice of you to say so. If I was right, I wish I had been wrong!. Fwiw I didn't catch a lot of pinks. not even a dozen in 4 trips. In the past with numbers like we have had there were days when I hooked 40 to 50 fish in 4 to 6 hours. I didn't really count but i keep track of consecutive counts where I hooked a fish. Have enough instances of hooking a pink on 8 to 10 successive casts it starts to add up!

Fish may have delayed due to the drought and bright weather. If there are more coming it should happen this week. All through last week well over 100,00 pinks pass through the Mission sonic fence every day. Add the commercial catch and we must be past 10 million by now.

[Rodney]

The pink salmon conveyor belt.

https://youtube.com/shorts/13mLSqVYDFw

[RalphH]

Hasn't been much interest in this topic for a couple of weeks. Checking the Mission fish passage, pinks have continued to migrate since Sept 15th which was the date of the last weekly panel report though panel discussion packages continue to be posted. From Sept 15th to Oct2nd about 2 million pinks passed Mission.

https://www.psc.org/FRPWeb/Escapement/SockPink_Passage_Summary.pdf

 No doubt more have gone past in the last few days. Those fish were going somewhere. I have seen videos this week that show masses of pinks in the Chehalis flats area. The Harrison often gets a big push of pinks in late Sept or early October. Years past I have caught these fish both in the Fraser and in the lower Harrison.

Escapement is now close to 9.6 million. That's 64% of the last in season forecast (15 million)  though it looks like the accounted run size isn't even 11 million (that's still a good return! Fishing was pretty good folks) so the actual escapement is close to 90%!

Speaking of escapement, I found an interesting graph of pink escapement vs actual run size. I take 2 things from it; 1) DFO has managed escapement very conservatively at least since 2001, most years it has been very high relative to the run size. 2) there isn't much of a correlation between the size of the escapement and the run size of the following cycle. Small escapements (ie '99) can yield huge returns in the next cycle. Large escapements  (i.e. 2003 and 2013) can be followed by small returns.

https://psc1.shinyapps.io/PSC_Annual_Fraser/ click on Pinks salmon in the top top right and then select run size and you'll get a graphic presentation of run size and escapement from 1959 to 2021

[Dave]

Considering DFO has not done Fraser River or tributary pink salmon spawner enumerations in about 20 years, I'm not sure how they arrive at an accurate escapement number.

[RalphH]

simple math Dave, number of fish caught downstream of Mission ( primarily in the Straight) + the 'escapement' past Mission. Spawner enumerations aren't all that reliable either. Counting from the air or even by foot can make for difficult estimates.

[Dave]

Counting from the air or even by foot can make for difficult estimates.

But better than none.