Nearly a dozen commercial fishing boats queued for gas and ice at the fuel dock on a foggy Saturday morning. The low tide set the pace slow enough for fishermen to talk to one another about the season even though they were eager to get underway. Boats bobbed up and down with names like Easy Street, Rustler, High Surf, Crown Haines, and Minnie A.
Then the sun made its way through the morning clouds and the salty breeze carried the sounds of ice and fuel rolling through large plastic hoses hanging from the dock.
It’s the third week since the season opener and fishermen like Matt Davis reflected on how the winds have shifted.
“The first week it was almost flat, calm and sunny in the water … was probably too clear. The second week, a little bit sloppy out there, from time to time,” he said.
Davis, who’s been commercial fishing since 2001, noticed fewer fishermen. “There’s way fewer boats than in some seasons, but it [has since] picked up. So there were more boats last week.”
Jerald Albecker, who has been fishing for 43 years, welcomed the smaller crowds.
“It hasn’t been too many at Sherman [Rock] or there’s so many more fish down below, we’re all spread out perfectly, you know,” he said.
The 70-year-old Albecker said that boats from nearby Wrangell and Petersburg usually fish in the same waters. But now there’s something like eight boats instead of the usual 20-25.
“So a lot of these guys are staying home, which makes it a lot nicer for us … We’re not crowded, like we usually are,” Albecker said.
Albecker is fishing for chum or dog salmon but said this year’s prices are cause for concern.
“It’s lower this year than the sockeye of course, they are up high, but there’s no sockeye. Dogs, there’s lots of dogs but the price is low. And it’s hard to make money at 50 cents a pound,” he said.
The same sentiment for prices was also troubling for Davis.
“A bunch of people didn’t go because they’re expecting the price to be at 30 cents, or the worst price I heard was 13 cents and the highest price I heard was 60. We heard that Harry [Reitze at Haines Packing Company] was paying 40 cents, and OBI was paying 50. And so I pitched off twice at 40 cents. And then I heard that Harry was raising his price,” Davis said.
Davis said Reitze, who many local fishermen sell to, raised his price and matched the 50 cents offered by Ocean Beauty and Icicle Seafoods or OBI. Reitze didn’t respond to messages seeking confirmation of his pricing this season.
“It’s always good when the buyers at least match the price, so that was encouraging,” Davis said.
Fish and Game area management biologist Nicole Zeiser wrote in an email that for commercial fishermen things are getting “fishy as far as chum salmon catches go. Big sets of 400-500 chum. Reports of some nets sinking due to too many fish.”
She said the chum salmon harvest is phenomenal and is well above average, and the sockeye salmon harvest is below average currently. Across Southeast Alaska, preliminary in-season harvest data shows fishermen catching just over 2.6 million chum so far this season, 103,000 chinook, 47,000 sockeye, 25,000 pinks and 5,000 silvers.