Harvesting Sockeye Salmon

Here are some pictures of some field work and a day down at Sweetheart Creek.  You are allowed to net up to 25 Sockeye Salmon per day per Juneau resident.  The Pink Salmon are in the stream really heavy too so you need to weed them out to get the nice Reds.  In about 12 hours of cast netting we ended up with 36 sockeye and we released around 800-1200 pink salmon.  We had griz within 50 yards, who were also fishing.  I went down there with Eran, Kevin, and Mike.  Since it was a week day (to miss the crowds) Hillary was stuck working :(      Thanks to Mike for the pictures!

Carrying Stout across a stream on the way down from Lemon Creek collecting water samples

Sunset at Outer Point

Sea Lions lounging in Lynn Canal

Sweetheart Creek

One of our companions for the day ...

To conserve energy we used two people to throw the cast net

A male brown bear stomping on salmon

A net full of pinks with one sockeye

The stream was just packed with Pink salmon.  The most tiring part of the day was getting all the pinks out of the net in pursuit of the sockeye

Pulling in the goods

One of the stringers of sockeye

 

 Video of Eran and I cast netting for salmon.  All of them were Pinks.

 A female brown bear with two cubs grabbing fish right next to us

Then lots of filleting, smoking, and packaging ...