Commercial Salmon Fisheries
Taku River Fishwheels - Sockeye Counts

If a login screen appears below, please try refreshing the webpage using your browser's refresh button.

Fish wheels on the Taku River are an essential platform for the sockeye salmon mark-recapture program, which provides inseason and postseason escapement estimates. Because fish wheel catchability can be affected by factors such as water level, fish size, abundance, daily spin time, etc., daily fish wheel catches do not necessarily have a meaningful relationship with upriver abundance. In 2018 fishwheel operation protocols were revised and now spin 18 hours a day instead of 24 hours.

Taku Management Model

This is the last inseason estimate, we are now in coho salmon management.

Note: The capture-recapture estimate is based on inseason information; as the season progresses the estimate will become more reliable because more data will be available to inform the estimate. Early season, the terminal run estimate is primarily based on a projection using the 10-year average fish wheels run timing and by the end of season it is mostly based on real-time data.

Bayesian Time Stratified Population Analysis Software

Current inriver run	97,510
Current escapement	76,463
Projected inriver run	121,955
Projected U.S. commercial catch Taku fish	54,265
Projected personal use catch Taku fish	1,500
Terminal Run	177,719

Bilateral capture-recapture data for Taku River sockeye salmon through day 3 of statistical week (SW) 33 (August 9) includes 5,645 tags released, 21,047 fish inspected, and 956 recoveries. Bayesian Time Stratified Population Analysis Software (BTPAS) was used to generate an inriver run estimate of sockeye salmon past Canyon Island as of August 9. Per recommendations of the Transboundary Panel, the inriver run estimate was reduced by 13% to 97,510 (SD =7,371) sockeye salmon to account for tag dropout and size selectivity of gear. After accounting for Canadian harvest, the current escapement estimate is 76,463 sockeye salmon. Using the recent 10-year average, 80% of the sockeye salmon run is past Canyon Island by August 9 so after accounting for U.S. harvest this week's estimate projects to a final inriver run of 121,955 sockeye salmon. Adding the projected U.S. terminal harvest of 55,765 to the projected inriver run yields a terminal run of 177,719 sockeye salmon. This estimate compares with a 2022 preseason terminal run forecast of 133,500 fish and a ten-year average terminal run size of 160,000 fish.

The Taku River sockeye salmon escapement goal range is 40,000 to 75,000 fish, with a management objective of 58,000 fish.

Chilkoot Lake Weir | Chilkat Lake Weir | Chilkat River Fishwheels | Hugh Smith Weir
Redoubt Lake Weir (Sockeye) | Situk (Lower) Weir (Chinook) | Situk (Lower) Weir (Sockeye) | Taku River Fishwheels (Sockeye)
Taku River Fishwheels (Coho)