Timing of Babine Lake Sockeye Salmon Stocks in the North-coast Commercial Fishery As Shown By Several Taggings at the Babine Counting Fence and Rates of Travel Through the Skeena and Babine Rivers

Approximate timing of Babine Lake stocks in the fishing area has been shown by tagging there and in the Skeena River estuary, and recovering tagged fish on Babine Lake spawning grounds (see Takagi and Smith MS 1973 for a summary). However, mixing with other major stocks in the tagging areas, removal of some tagged fish by recapture before they reached the river, and other causes have resulted in too few recoveries in some stocks to permit the precise management required in the intensive fishery.

The purpose of this manuscript is to summarize the results of the "fence" taggings to estimate the most probable time and sequence of arrival of stocks there, and provide a best estimate of their time in the fishery by back-plotting according to the "outside" tagging programs. Data from several years of tagging of seaward migrants are also useful for estimating timing and we have also used this information in considering the possibility of exploiting Babine stocks at different rates on the basis of their different timing in the commercial fishery.