After the longest summer king salmon troll opening in nearly 20 years, the Southeast Alaska commercial troll fishery closed to the taking of all salmon for three days as a coho conservation measure, the Department of Fish and Game announced July 25.
The closure went into effect at 11:59 p.m. July 28 and ended at 12:01 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 1.
Despite the lengthy four-week king opening, the fleet hooked less than three-quarters of its anticipated July catch. All told, trollers were expected to have taken about 87,000 king salmon by the time of the shutdown, leaving 67,000 fish in the summer allocation uncaught.
The troll fishery now will remain open indefinitely until closed by emergency order.
The goal of the three-day closure was to ensure that adequate numbers of coho salmon could make it to their home streams, said Grant Hagerman, troll management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Sitka.
“It’s just to ensure that we’re getting enough fish that are passing to inside waters and moving toward more terminal areas for escapement and to the river mouths,” Hagerman said July 26.
Regardless of coho catch rates, king salmon catch rates were low.
While a number of factors are in play in the low king salmon harvest, Hagerman said, reduced fishing effort and lower king salmon abundance likely have a significant role in the diminished haul.
At the start of July, about 580 boats were active in the Southeast fishery, he said, but as the weeks drew on, that number declined by roughly half. Initially, the department estimated that the first summer troll opener would last about 12 days, but it ran for 28. In 2003, a year of tremendous salmon abundance, the king opener lasted for 39 days.
The upcoming closure is the first-ever July coho conservation closure. Such closures have previously happened in August, and can sometimes last for more than a week.
A number of trollers have been targeting cohos instead of kings, which Hagerman said has further reduced the overall chinook catch and led to a longer king opening.
The brief duration of the closure is likely to cause bottlenecks for the fleet, said Alaska Trollers Association president Matt Donohoe, of Sitka.
“A three-day closure really bottlenecks the fleet. It screws up the plants for packers and ice. If, like us, you’re out on the grounds trying to fish it’s a day at least to get back to town,” Donohoe said.
Meanwhile, trollers can continue to target hatchery salmon in designated terminal harvest areas during the closure.
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