The Alaska Department of Fish and Game last week increased the king salmon take allowed for non-resident anglers this summer, in response, department officials say, to lower-than-expected harvest.
Previously, non-residents across Southeast had been permitted to keep one king salmon from July 1 onward. With the new regulations, non-residents will be permitted two, with king salmon caught before July 1 counted toward that limit. The new regulations make no changes to other user groups; resident anglers may keep two king salmon per day with no annual limit.
The change comes with king salmon harvest in the region well below expected levels. Prior to the season, Fish and Game was targeting a total Southeast king salmon sport fish harvest of 43,600 fish. That number is just below the harvest allowed by the Pacific Salmon Treaty, which allocates specific portions of the king salmon take to geographic areas, gear groups and user groups in the United States and Canada.
In-season management to meet that target is partially the product of a relatively new regulatory regime, passed in early 2025 by the state’s Board of Fisheries.
In the past, the regional troll and sport fisheries had overlapping allocations — the number of king salmon that could be harvested by each group. With the sport fishery generally targeting king salmon earlier in the season, if sport fishermen caught more than they were allotted, there would be a corresponding decrease in the troll fishing harvest later in the season. When the sport fishery undershot its allotment, the troll fishery would be given extra opportunity.
That changed when the Board of Fisheries last year voted to separate the allotments. Instead of allowing the sport fish harvest to fluctuate above and below targets, compensated for by the troll fishery, Fish and Game is now directed to continuously adjust regulations in-season to meet allocation targets exactly.
The change had strong support from the troll fishery and was opposed by a large number of charter boat and lodge owners. Trollers cited the lack of a limited entry system for tourist-oriented sport fish operations and argued the industry had been taking an outsize share of the king salmon population at the expense of troll openings.
“There should be clear direction to ADF&G to implement inseason management as necessary to preserve both resident sport fishing opportunity and maintain the troll allocation,” wrote the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association in public comment on the management change. “Inseason management requires inseason harvest projections and responsive adjustments.”
On the other hand, the Craig Fish and Game Advisory Council called the change a “kiss of death” for the charter fleet due to potentially reduced harvest for non-residents early in the season.
“Our business is absolutely dependent on sufficient non-resident access to king salmon in the early season… there is not enough access to other species of fish during this time of year, and non-residents will simply not travel across the country and spend the incredible amount of money that they do in our communities if this limit is reduced in June and early July,” said one public comment from Thorne Bay lodge owner Luther Jenson.
This year, sportfish harvest has came in well below expectations. Based on data from before the regulation change, the fishery was expected to undershoot its 43,600 fish target by roughly 15-20%, said Fish and Game Haines area sportfish biologist John Whitinger. Now, state managers hope the new regulations will bring harvest closer to that target.
On a regionwide level, Fish and Game staff don’t have a clear explanation for why harvest has been down.
The total amount of fishing being done — known as effort — is roughly in line with last year, Fish and Game regional manager Troy Tydinco said this week. But the catch per unit, essentially the productivity of those anglers, is lower than expected.
That could be explained by at least two different factors, Tydinco said: one, that the fish aren’t where they usually are, so anglers are missing them. Or, there are fewer fish than expected. Likely, he said, it’s a combination of multiple factors.
There’s special concern about the king salmon population in the Lynn Canal: the king salmon sport fishery this year opened for the first time in nearly a decade, following years of low population numbers in the 2010s.
Fish and Game’s preseason projection was for a strong run of Chilkat River king salmon, but there’s limited data in-season to determine whether that forecast is coming to pass.
There’s king salmon abundance data from Fish and Game area researcher Brian Elliott, who runs a king salmon tagging project on the Chilkat river. The project consists of a tagging event and a recapture event, and there should be some preliminary data from that first tagging event in the next two weeks. But the data is only enough for a “ballpark” guess at run strength — enough to place abundance in categories of “good, average, or bad,” Elliot said — and not enough for a real estimate. That more accurate population estimate is only expected to come in early September.
Meanwhile, some say Fish and Game’s effort to increase harvest will threaten the recovery of the Chilkat run. One of those voicing that concern is Ken Gross, who operates one of Lynn Canal’s two charter boats targeting kings.
With bad fishing so far this season, Gross assumed new regulations would restrict harvest, and was surprised to find fisheries managers have done the opposite.
Theoretically, with his majority non-resident clientele, Gross is part of the group that stands to benefit from loosened regulations on non-resident anglersBut Gross says he’s more worried about the long-term health of the stock, especially given that he believes his business won’t even see a short-term boost.
While the new regulations allow more retention for non-residents, his charter operation is primarily catch and release, he said, almost by necessity: “I can’t take care of meat on my boat. You can’t bleed them or gut them, and I don’t even have ice on my boat. (Clients) can’t take it to a processor, they can’t take it on a cruise ship, and the restaurants aren’t allowed to cook it.”
One group that can benefit and take more meat home are Canadian anglers, he said. But he called that “absurd,” in light of the years of closures for locals.
Fish and Game staff have a different perspective, noting the unlimited annual limit for locals.
“It is in legislation that the fishery is managed so residents have priority, no matter what,” Whitinger said. “This measure does not impact that because residents have an unlimited annual limit. We’re providing opportunity for non-residents, but still not giving them more than residents.”
That’s another effect of the new system voted into place by the Board of Fish, which aims to hold resident limits steady and instead use non-resident limits as a primary in-season management tool.
Both Tydinco and Whitinger also pointed to restricted area on the Chilkat side this year as a special conservation measure meant to protect the local stock. The river is closed to anglers from around Kochu Island north — roughly even with the Chilkat State Park entrance — through July 15, at which point most of the run is expected to have migrated into the river, Whitinger said.
Whitinger also pointed to area-specific factors that he said will decrease the impact of the new regulations on the Chilkat run.
In Southeast broadly, non-residents represent about three-quarters of the king salmon sportfish harvest. The Lynn Canal, however, only has the two charter operations, which Whitinger believes will reduce the impact of the new non-resident regulations.
As new harvest projections come in, the regulations may yet again change.
“We project effort and harvest and inevitably, it’s not exactly what we anticipate,” Tydinco said. “As we go through the season we’ll have to keep fine tuning and making adjustments. Ideally we’d set the regulations perfectly and leave them in place. We’re trying to balance stability in the fishery and meeting the allocation; we may have to make adjustments again toward the end of the season, though it’s our hope we don’t have to.”