Commercial trollers in Southeast have another chance to harvest king salmon this week. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has called a third noncompetitive fishery for Chinook.
Fishermen will be allotted 15 king salmon over the 10 day period which starts/started on Thursday morning.
It’s the fourth king opener this summer. In the competitive July opener, trollers caught around 44,000 king salmon, leaving around 9,000 treaty kings for the rest of the season– too few to support another competitive troll fishery. In response, the state called two noncompetitive “limited harvest fisheries” in August to allow trollers to catch the remaining summer kings, but 5,400 of those fish are still up for grabs.
The Chinook allocation is set by the Pacific Salmon Commission, under the terms of a treaty between the United States and Canada. This year, the allocation was a record low.
Trollers are not required to register for the 10-day fishery, which closes on September 20.
