Trollers get Neets Bay back through the middle of October

Trollers can fish the Neets Bay Terminal Harvest Area again, from 12:01 am Sept. 18 through 11:59 pm Oct. 10, in waters east of Bug Island to the Inner-Bay line. Chinook retention stays closed.

Fish and Game shut the area to troll gear on Aug. 3, when the Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association was closing in on its chum cost recovery target — the harvest the association sells to fund its own operations. It had taken 8.6 million pounds by then, about 73 percent of an 11.8 million pound forecast.

Trollers could still work west of the Bug Island line while the closure held, and a rotational seine and gillnet fishery ran inside the area for two weeks in August.

The reopening order gives no reason.