Production of Taku River coho salmon, 1991-1992
By: by Steven Elliott and David R. Bernard.
Contributors: Bernard, David R.; Alaska. Division of Sport Fish.
Series: Fishery data series -- no. 94-1.
Publisher: Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game, Division of Sport Fish
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Anchorage
Language: eng
Number of pages: 61
Subjects: Coho salmon -- Taku River (B.C. and Alaska) -- Statistics.; Fish populations -- Taku River (B.C. and Alaska) -- Statistics.; Fishes -- Taku River (B.C. and Alaska) -- Statistics.
Genres: Statistics.
Description: As part of an ongoing study of the production of coho salmon Oncorhynchus kisutch from Taku River, near Juneau, Alaska, the Division of Sport Fish implanted coded wire tags in smolt leaving the river in spring 1991. Subsequent recovery of these fish in 1992 was used in part to estimate the harvest, production, exploitation rate, and estimate the abundance of smolt in 1991. In 1991 a 12-foot diameter rotary smolt trap fished at Barrel Point, Taku River, caught 4,049 coho salmon smolt from 23 May to 26 June. Of these, 3,740 were coded wire tagged with tag number 04-28-49. Smolt sampled from the catch averaged 101 millimeters fork length, and were 56% age 1.0, 43% age 2.0, and 1% age 3.0. In 1992, 83 adult coho salmon bearing coded wire tags implanted at Barrel Point were recovered in random samples of marine fisheries. These were pooled with 46 coded wire tags from adults that had been tagged as fingerlings or smolt at other locations in Taku River to produce an estimate of total marine harvest of 123,440 (SE=30,776). Of this harvest, the troll fishery took an estimated 34%, drift gill net fisheries took 64%, and recreational fisheries took 0.3%. A mark recapture experiment conducted by the Commercial Fisheries Division estimated the in-river escapement of coho salmon in Taku River past Canyon Island at 89,270 (SE=19,182) fish. The return for 1992, the sum of escapement and harvest, was 212,710 (SE=36,264) and the exploitation rate of the return was an estimated 58% (SE=6%). The 1991 smolt abundance ranged from 743,164 (SE=247,062) to 990,885 (SE=373,772), estimates which are compromised because of bias resulting from low rates of recapture.
Notes: "May 1994".

"Literature cited": p. 33-36.

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