Its that time of year again. The Squaxin Island Fishing Season is underway. In the past week we have had four to five fishermen out fishing Budd Inlet, Case Inlet,Dana, Pickering, and Peale Passages. Carr Inlet opened on August 1st.

Reports are that fishermen have been doing well in Carr Inlet. Budd Inlet is starting to pick up. Buyer prices started at $4 per lbs. Prices are expected to drop this week to $3.50 with Inner Budd Inlet fishery opening with the buyers expecting the fishery to produce darker Chinook.

Reports from our Lummi neighbors up north that they are encountering large amounts of brown slime attributed to a plankton bloom than catching sockeye in nets.    The plankton bloom seems to be impacting the harvest significantly.   The Olympian .

Gill net fishermen catch their quarry in long, floating curtains of monofilament that don’t work if migrating fish can see them. If the brown stuff doesn’t clear out in the weeks ahead, other salmon fisheries also might be affected.

I’ve fished sockeye all my life,” said Merle Jefferson, 58, Lummi Nation’s director of natural resources. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen it. … We cannot catch the fish because the nets are all fouled up.”

Art Lane, a Lummi fisherman who sets his net out from a small skiff, said the brown coating made his net so heavy it was hard to pull it out of the water and get it back into the boat. “A lot of skiffs were darn near sinking because of the weight,” Lane said.

Year after year fisheries are being challenged with environmental changes in the Puget Sound.  This is unfortunate  for Lummi fishermen.

One positive that may come of this is a stronger return of Sockeye to the Frasier River.  We will have to wait and see.

A piece about the tribe’s efforts to find out more about local salmon populations:

The Squaxin Island Tribe is taking a close look at where coho salmon live in the Sherwood Creek watershed.

Biologists from the tribe and the South Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group are looking for juvenile coho by snorkeling stretches of the stream and its main tributary, Schumacher Creek.

They’ll compare the number of fish they see with data from temperature monitoring and habitat surveys. “We’re not just trying to find where the fish are, but we’re also trying to figure out why they’re here and how well they’re doing,” said Sarah Haque, the tribe’s Timber/Fish/Wildlife biologist. By monitoring the creek’s temperature and looking closely at what kind of habitat the fish prefer, the researchers will get a better understanding of how the watershed supports wild coho.