Sockeye salmon are almost done spawning at Cape Wislow, but the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has just started counting the run.

It wasn’t a lack of funding, but rather, personnel problems that kept Fish and Game from opening their weir last month. They rushed to make two new hires, and sent them to track the run from Reese Bay to McLees Lake this Monday.

Though the season count will be far from complete, Fish and Game employee Matt Keyse says some data is better than none.

“It’s all information,” Keyse says. “We can get age, sex [and] length information on the fish that are coming through as well, so as much information as we can gather – and we can always do some sort of extrapolations possibly later on to estimate a little closer to what the actual run size was."

Usually, sockeye hit their peak at Wislow in early July. Ten thousand fish is the minimum escapement goal for the weir – and Keyse says it’s not unheard of to reach that number by mid-June.

At the end of June, Keyse says Fish and Game uses the Wislow weir to decide if they need to close fishing at the mouth of the stream for the first week and a half of July.

When the weir didn’t open last month, the state ban kicked in automatically. Keyse says there won’t be any other fishing bans this season.

On their first full day at Wislow, Fish and Game counted 1,086 sockeye. The weir may stay open through silver season in August.