Fraser River Sockeye Fisheries
Posted on August 10th, 2006 by Rodney Hsu, webmaster

There are many Fraser River sockeye salmon fisheries taking place during August, including commercial and First Nations openings. This article provides a good summary on when and where these are taking place as well as relative links that can provide you more information and updated data.

In-river Test Fisheries:
Test fisheries are ongoing for sockeye run size and composition at Whonnock and Cottonwood. For more information, visit the DFO test fishing website.

Albion is a chinook/chum test fishery.  Albion catches can be found on this page.

Gill Net
Area E had a test fishery last week - two boats looking to supplement the Whonnock and Cottonwood test boats.  They were looking for alternate sites as the Whonnock and Cottonwood sites have a few issues with seals.  Area E is the in-river gill net fishery, they fish in the river up to Mission.

Area E is expected to have a commercial opening in the river next week.  This opening will take place on either Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.  Information on commercial openings can be found on the fishery notice site (Select Area 29 from the Management Area list and commercial salmon gill net from the fishery list or else you will get several hundred notices returned).

Area D is the gill net fishery that takes place up in Johnstone Strait.

Trollers:
Area H (inside trollers) and Area G (WCVI) trollers have been fishing for the last few days.  From the link above, select commercial salmon troll and you should see when they have openings.

Seiners:
Area B are also expected to have an opening shortly.  Same website but select commercial salmon seine.  They fish in Juan de Fuca and in Johnstone Straits.

First Nations
First Nations economic fisheries kick off this week.  Musqueam and Tsawwassen will fish from Friday at 7 am to Sunday at 10 am.  The Sto:lo signatories will fish from Thursday at 6 pm to Sunday at 6 pm for set nets and Saturday and Sunday from 7 to 7 with drift nets.

Food fisheries are on-going for the non-signatories, these may occur at the same time as the fisheries above and they may occur at different times depending on what the bands request.  Information on the dates, times and catches of all lower river FN fisheries can be found on this page.

Recreational: 
Links to in-season Fraser River recreational catch info and openings can be found on this page.

Escapements:
In-season escapement information can be found on this page.

Pacific Salmon Commission
The commission was formed by the Governments of Canada and the United States to implement the Pacfic Salmon Treaty.  There are three panels - the southern panel, northern panel and Fraser Panel.  The Fraser Panel must approve all fisheries that take place in Fraser Panel waters (basically from the bottom of Lasqueti around to a bit north of Uculet.  The commission runs several test fisheries and the numbers used in these fisheries are used as in-season indicators of run size and composition.  You can access test fishing information and everything you wanted to know about the Salmon Treaty from this site.

Send us a news tip!

Back to Fishy News.