The 2012 Season

Looks to be an interesting summer.  Lots of our top echelon from SE has fled to PWS.  Not a few rockstars are also showing late from Sardines.

This is when the movie 'southeast surprise' shows up.

Remember 1989?  How about 99?  Or 96 on the southend?

Where'd those come from?

Now the conditions that would have shown us an upside surprise are mostly missing.  The emerging fry numbers were among the lowest ever, if not the lowest ever.  But as we found last year, finding fry from Icy Strait means little south of District 9.   So the lack of a steady fry indicator for POW, Clarence and Outside Baranof would lead one to believe that there may have been some parts of SE that escaped the terrible winter of 2010-2011, which is the winter that made or broke this 2012 run.

Oh, the winter of 10-11.  Hunted Farragut all fall.  It was a good indicator of what had happened througout Frederick Sound in 2010.   The wonderful stench of spawned out humpies was steady and as strong as any year in recent memory.  Took a long weekend to visit my wife. When I got back our family cabin and everything around it froze for miles throughout the Farragut River watershed.  On November 10th.  Early freeze, Check.  Deep freeze, check.  The Germans who lived there since 1984 say that's the deepest and worst winter they've had in the past 27.

So.  The season is uncertain but there should be a chum surprise.  Remember the cycle.  1984-8-92-96-00-04-08-12---  Yes.   2012 is in the dominant wild and hatchery chum cycle.  Remember 96?  How about 2000.    I recall 1984, the one that started it all, because  Freddy told me that the only season that was bigger was 1966.

So upside on chums.  Check.

Upside on southern pinks. Check.


I'm changing my forecast from terrible at 16 million  to upside southern surprise at 30 million pinks.

And the chums will be better than recent years.  Better.  Not records but a relatively big upside surprise.