The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has reduced this year’s non-hatchery chinook catch limit for Southeast commercial trollers by 44,000 fish — about 23% lower than last year’s harvest quota.
The catch limit for sportfishing, commercial seine and gillnet fleets also were set about 23% lower than last year.
The largest salmon are the main moneymaker for many trollers.
This year’s harvest limit, while down substantially from 2022, is about the same as was set for 2021 and 2020. It’s almost 50% higher than 2019, when several runs were not expected to reach escapement goals for spawning that year.
The state sets the preseason catch limits for each gear group in Southeast under the management provisions of the Pacific Salmon Treaty between the U.S. and Canada, which is intended to protect and allocate chinook harvests on the West Coast.
“The preseason outlook is for continued poor production of Southeast Alaska chinook salmon stocks,” the Department of Fish and Game reported in its announcement last Thursday, citing “stocks of management concern” in the Chilkat, Taku, Stikine, Unuk and Chickamin rivers, along with Andrew Creek which flows into the Stikine.
“Although the Chilkat and Taku stocks are projected to meet their escapement goals, run forecasts are still well below long-term average production. This will necessitate a management regime aimed at minimizing catches of these stocks,” the announcement stated.
The department set the 2023 preseason target for non-hatchery chinook at 201,900, down from 261,250 last year.
The all-gear catch limit is allocated among sport and commercial fisheries under management plans specified by the Alaska Board of Fisheries: 149,100 for commercial trollers this year (down from 193,150 last year); 37,280 for sportfishing (down from last year’s 48,290); 8,680 for purse seiners (down from 11,230); and 5,850 for drift gillnetters (down from 7,580).
The Pacific Salmon Commission announced in February that it will use a new method to set chinook harvest caps for Southeast – intended to improve accuracy – combining annual data of the effort and harvest of king salmon by the winter power troll fishery in the Sitka Sound area with the chinook salmon abundance model that the commission usually uses.
The winter chinook fishery in Southeast is set to end April 15. Harvest of non-Alaska hatchery chinook during the spring fisheries, which run through June 30, will be counted toward the 2023 treaty harvest limit for each gear group.
For the summer season, Fish and Game explained it will subtract the “sum of the treaty chinook salmon harvested in winter and spring troll fisheries from the annual troll treaty allocation.”
The summer troll fishery will be allowed to harvest 70% of the remaining troll allocation in the first summer chinook salmon opening in July. Then, any remaining allocation will be open to harvest during a second (August) opening, Fish and Game said.
Anna Laffrey of the Ketchikan Daily News contributed to this report.
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