Tyee Steelhead Index to Aug.22nd

Here is the Tyee Steelhead Index to August 22nd.
We offer this with the usual long provisos copied below.
The Tyee Test Fishery has well known shortcomings ( we posted about this recently here:http://skeenafisheriesblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/tyee-test-fishery-uncertainty.html) highlighted by last years 38% overestimate of the sockeye run.
As such, please take any information presented in the Tyee Steelhead Index with this in mind.


The Tyee Test Fishery is a sockeye salmon test fishery; it is only calibrated for sockeye (Babine River Weir counts), although the DFO use data from all salmon species for management, and MOE does for steelhead. As such, Tyee catches are not standardized and therefore, comparing data between years or even individual days or gillnet sets is not valid in the strictest scientific sense. That said, the Tyee Test Fishery has been operated in the same manner since 1956 and a conventional gillnet vessel makes a 60 minute set with 200 fathoms (1200 feet) of net on every slack tide that occurs during daylight from early June to late August/early September.