The Beacon Of Dillingham

In a recent press conference in Anchorage after a brief visit to the fishing grounds here, Judge W.C. Arnold, General Manager of the Alaska Salmon Industry, expressed the following opinion:

"The pack is far below what had been estimated; the run is not as heavy as last year." He said approximately 450,000 cases had been packed by July 15 compared with a pack of 611,851 cases by July 12 last year.

(NOTE: On July 10th, T.F. Sundoz, President of the Columbia River Packers Association, Inc., in Astoria, Oregon, issued the report that the Bristol Bay salmon pack in Alaska was running 4% ahead of '52.

Arnold stated, "The escapement so far indicates that the FWS was right in its original proposal to close the Nushagak entirely during 1953. I think the FWS made a serious error in reversing themselves."

The Bering Sea Fishermen's Union officials insist that red salmon are coming up the Nushagak river thick and fast in the Dillingham area in spite of FWS predictions of a poor run.

Early this year the service announced complete closure of the Nushagak then agreed to a limited season of 2 days a week from June 25-July 25 after a protest to the closure was executed. This war of the fish season started when the FWS announced the Closure upon the fish exports prediction or a poor cycle this year and the need of maximum escapement.

The BSFU protested. The move on the grounds that such drastic stop would wipe out this year's cash crop for Alaskans who traditionally fish the river.

So the compromise

The fish seem to be riding the wrong cycle. So many fish here have been taken this year that some have had to be transferred to Naknek for canning. This is not the first time the salmon have failed to conform to "Biological schedules"...last year with everyone ready for a "bumper crop" no fish arrived at all. It is solemnly acknowledged that a salmon ranks right up with a woman in love--easier to second-guess than to out-guess.

PRESS RELEASE: Based on a wire to Bob Atwood, Editor, Anchorage Daily Times, from Jim Downey, Secy/Treas. BSFU; July 16:

Fish were running so good up the Nushagak that The BSFU extended arguments for release of fishing time restrictions when Jim Downey declared that the escapement of red salmon to the spawning areas was the "greatest since 1938". Downey took issue with recently published statements by H. C. Arnold whom he said, "if there is any question of poor escapement we will show that the FWS was drastically wrong, as were the ASI companies.

One floater here has over 200,000 salmon and figured if went upstream in a two-day period. "If the Nushagak was poor," asks Downey,"why