State gives trollers 10 days to go after kings, with 12-fish limit

Trollers shoved off from docks across Southeast Alaska over the weekend, following an announcement from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game of a very limited 10-day commercial opening for kings.

The brief window opened Sept. 1 and was scheduled to close Sept. 10, with a limit of 12 kings per troller.

The department said it expects trollers will harvest the remaining Southeast allocation of about 4,000 fish. That’s what remains of the commercial net fisheries share of Southeast kings, as seine fisheries have wrapped up and gillnet fisheries are winding down across the region.

Trollers’ first summer retention period for chinook kicked off on July 1, and a total of 467 troll permit holders across the region harvested about 83,000 chinook over eight days, according to preliminary data from the state.

Since mid-July, fewer than 300 boats have been fishing across the region, which Alaska Trollers Association president Matt Donohoe, a troller out of Sitka, calls an “all-time low.”

Kings this year are fetching an average of about $6 per pound and weigh about 11 pounds on average, according to state data.

Following the strong harvest during the initial July troll opener, Fish and Game estimated in early August that only about 15,000 kings remained in trollers’ allocation for the season. But trollers didn’t get a second try at kings in August because sport fishermen, which includes charter fishers, exceeded their harvest allocation by more than 14,000.

Later in August, the department announced that beginning on Aug. 26 all sport fishermen in Southeast would be barred from retaining kings until Oct. 1 due to the harvest overage.

But after announcing the closure for sport fishermen, the Fish and Game commissioner signaled the department might open up a second, limited opportunity for commercial trollers to catch and keep kings left over by the net fisheries to ensure the state uses up its entire allocation under the U.S.-Canada salmon treaty.

Last year, the department on Sept. 1 opened up a similar 10-day opportunity for trollers to target 3,200 kings.