It’s looking like a lousy king salmon year and it’s too early to know much about sockeye returns, but the Haines fishing fleet is harvesting a solid return of hatchery chums.
“Everyone’s bringing in enhanced chums,” said Wyatt Rhea-Fournier, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Lynn Canal (District 15) area management biologist for commercial fisheries.
“They are big and bright,” Rhea-Fournier said Tuesday of the Douglas Island Pink and Chum (DIPAC) Juneau hatchery returns netted by the Haines fleet.
District 15 extends down the canal to just south of Benjamin Island, which is twice as far from Haines as it is from downtown Juneau.
Fishermen are getting 85 cents a pound to start the year, he said, a little better than last year’s initial payout, with the chums averaging 9.5 pounds. “Some of those folks are calling them $10 fish.”
The 2017 Southeast chum catch averaged 8.3 pounds per fish.
The focus on chum salmon will soon change, Rhea-Fournier said. “I will switch my mindset to sockeye.”
However, low water levels are keeping the sockeye away from spawning rivers. Warmer weather to melt the snowpack would help. Rhea-Fouriner hopes for a good sockeye year. “That is my optimism, but I will manage conservatively.”
The area met its escapement goal for sockeyes to reach the spawning grounds in 2013, which is the parent year of this summer’s returns. Most anything would be better than 2017’s returns, the worst in 30 years, he said.
The sockeye harvest in Southeast last year totaling just 664,000 fish, sold to buyers for less than $6.7 million, according to Fish and Game’s fall report, less than one-tenth the value of the $75 million chum harvest.
While pulling in chum and waiting for sockeye, area fishermen haven’t taken many king salmon — because they are not there to take. The department has closed or restricted king fishing statewide, especially in Southeast.
“It’s the most restricted our fishery has ever been,” Rhea-Fournier said. “Our fishermen want to rebuild the stocks, too.”
The Chilkat River has done “very poorly on escapement goals” for kings, missing in five of the past six years, said Rich Chapell, area management biologist for sport fish.
It’s too soon to count a trend of king returns at the fish wheel and the weekly tag-and-release driftnet catch, Chapell said. “So far, we’ve gotten a few.”
The smaller fish tend to stay closer to shore and get scooped up in the fish wheel, with larger kings netted in the middle of the river, Chapell explained. The workers tag the fish before putting them back into the water to continue their journey to the spawning grounds.
To protect kings, Chilkat Inlet is closed to marine subsistence fishing through July 20, then open July 21 south of the marker at Letnikof Point only. The inlet north of Glacier Point will be open as of July 28. By then, 95 percent of any returning kings should be past the nets, Rhea-Fournier said.
“Additionally, the department is requesting all king salmon incidentally caught in area subsistence fisheries be released to assist in rebuilding the Chilkat River king salmon run,” the commercial fisheries division announced last month.
Closures have extended to sport fishing, too. The state closed Chilkat Inlet to sport king fishing through June 30 for the area immediately north of Seduction Point, and banned any retention or possession of kings through Dec. 15 for waters north of Sherman Rock.
Outside restricted areas, the department announced Tuesday that the first summer king troll opening will start at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, targeting approximately 52,800 treaty salmon. The department expects it will take four or five days of fishing to hit the target.