Down on the Lower Stikine Fisheries camp, the sun shines. The tied up boats klink against each other as the brown cloudy water slowly rises without stop. The odd log or ice chunk reminds of the world upstream. Fisheries staff are out checking and rebaiting traps every morning and tagging them in the afternoon. The crews just finished up a two-day jet boat course through Raven Rescue, Mēduh to Thyren our amazing instructor.

The team is catching a few hundred coho a day now, with numbers picking up. Chinook smolts are in the 10s or 20s a day. All fish get tagged in the nose to mark them as Stikine fish in case they get caught in a mixed stock fishery out at sea. Working together with DFO technicians from Whitehorse, the team is gearing up for the big plug of smolts. Another crew is off to Tahltan Lake this week to build the smolt fence. Moe, the mayor of Tahltan Lake, will be back up there, along with a crew of strong backs to build fence, clear trails, take down beaver dams and likely shovel some snow.