The 2026 Southeast harvest limit for king salmon is more than 50% higher than the limit for 2025. This year, Southeast Alaska fishermen can catch a total 205,300 treaty king salmon — fish that didn’t come from Alaska hatcheries — according to a March 31 announcement by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

State fishery managers use the harvest target for treaty kings to set catch limits for each gear type in sport and commercial fisheries.

This year’s harvest target for Southeast was calculated in accordance with the U.S.-Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty, which regulates fishing for migratory king (chinook) populations along the West Coast of both countries.

In 2025, due to poor forecasts for the migratory stocks that drive Southeast fisheries, the treaty limit hit a record low of 133,500. That represented a 40% cut from the 2024 Southeast limit of 211,400.

In recent years, the Southeast limit has ranged between a high of 355,600 kings in 2016 down to roughly 130,000 in both 2018 and 2025, Fish and Game records show.

Announcing the 2026 Southeast limit, Fish and Game reported that “several stocks have shown signs of improvement in 2024 and 2025.”

From this year’s harvest limit, commercial troll fishermen can take up to 146,000 kings, up substantially from the record-low 92,730 in 2025.

Trollers get to fish “50,000 more chinook than last year, with last year being the lowest allocation in history, so it’s better than terrible for the trollers this year,” said Patrick Baum, an Alaska Trollers Association board member.

Some trollers depend on the high-value kings for about 40% to 50% of their annual income, while facing ever-increasing prices for fuel, groceries and maintenance required to operate their vessels.

In early 2025, the Alaska Board of Fisheries changed the way the state divides the allocation between troll and sport by shifting 3% of the troll allocation to the sport sector each year, which added to trollers’ frustration about the low harvest limit last year.

For 2026, resident and nonresident sport anglers in Southeast can harvest 43,600 kings, the department announced.

That sport harvest limit is up from the record-low 27,700 allowed last year.

This year residents can harvest two kings, 28 inches or greater in length, each day, with no annual limit. The record-low treaty allocation in 2025 triggered a one-fish daily limit for residents, with no annual cap.

Nonresidents in 2026 can catch one king salmon, 28 inches or greater in length, each day. From Jan. 1 through June 30, nonresidents have an annual limit of three; from July 1 through Dec. 31, the nonresident annual limit is one.

Nonresidents in 2025 were bound to an unusually tight, year-round annual limit of one fish.

On March 31, the department also announced its annual closure of waters around Petersburg and Wrangell, particularly in front of the Stikine River, to protect weak king salmon runs.

“The retention of king salmon is prohibited; any king salmon caught must be released immediately,” in District 8 in front of the Stikine and a portion of the Back Channel, from April 1 through July 14.

The same restriction applies April 1 through June 14 in the waters around Wrangell, Kupreanof, Etolin, Zarembo and Mitkof islands, which encompass District 6, District 10 and portions of District 5, District 7 and District 9.

The closure from April 1 through June 14 also applies to waters near Juneau, Haines and Skagway.

Troy Tydingco, state sport fishery manager based in Sitka, said the one-fish limit for nonresidents in 2025 is having a lingering impact his year on the Southeast sportfishing industry that serves primarily nonresident clients.

He said nonresidents may have been deterred from booking charter fishing trips after seeing the one-king nonresident annual limit for all of 2025 and following emergency closures to king salmon retention in recent years.

The harvest by nonresidents has comprised about 75% of Southeast sport harvest in recent years.

For other gear types, the state set the 2026 harvest for Southeast commercial seiners at 8,800 kings; for drift gillnetters, 5,900; and 1,000 for set gillnetters.

This story was originally published by the Daily Sitka Sentinel.