The 2025 Southeast Alaska harvest limit for king salmon will be almost 40% less than last year, a drop of 60,000 fish.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game on April 1 announced an overall allocation of 130,800 treaty king salmon — fish that don’t originate in Alaska hatcheries — for all gear groups targeting kings in waters off Southeast Alaska and Yakutat.
In recent years, Southeast Alaska’s all-gear allocation has ranged between a high of 355,600 treaty kings in 2016 down to 130,000 in 2018, Fish and Game records show. The regionwide king quota for all commercial and sport fishermen averaged about 200,900 kings a year from 2020 through 2024.
This year’s all-gear catch limit was set based on measures of king abundance calculated by the Pacific Salmon Commission’s “chinook model,” and did not incorporate annual data from the winter troll fishery in Sitka Sound, which the commission had used in recent years through 2023 to estimate the abundance of kings in Southeast and to set the all-gear allocation for the region.
The commission is tasked with implementing the U.S.-Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty. It regulates the catch for migratory king populations along the west coast of both countries.
The commission allocates the king salmon catch between the U.S. and Canada, and the Alaska Board of Fisheries approves management plans to split Alaska’s catch between different gear types and user groups, such as sport and commercial.
Dani Evenson, Juneau-based policy coordinator for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said this year’s low quota for Southeast is due in large part to a poor forecast for four of the seven Pacific Northwest king stocks “that really drive our mixed-stock king fisheries.”
The four king stocks that “aren’t doing well,” driving the low allocation for Southeast, are the Fraser River summer run in British Columbia, the West Coast Vancouver Island run, Columbia River summer run king, and Washington coast kings.
The so-called treaty salmon migrant from their Pacific Northwest spawning rivers through Southeast Alaska waters. The U.S.-Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty was negotiated 40 years ago to address the cross-country migration and harvest.
The 2025 allocation for Southeast has resulted in cuts to bag limits for resident and nonresident sport anglers, a steep drop in the commercial troll harvest quota, and a smaller allocation for the commercial net fisheries throughout the region.
Commercial troll fishermen have already lamented the loss of king fishing quota this year in the wake of a 5-2 vote by the Alaska Board of Fisheries in Ketchikan in February to reallocate some of the troll fishery’s king allocation to the growing sportfishing (charter) sector.
With the reduced allocation of treaty salmon, Fish and Game announced April 1 that this year commercial troll fishery can catch up to 92,700 treaty kings, down 60,300 fish from last year’s preseason harvest limit of 153,000.
Norm Pillen, the president of the Sitka-based Seafood Producers Cooperative, said the low allocation is “very concerning” for processors, as kings are “one of our highest-margin products” and “very important to our fleet.”
Meanwhile, resident and nonresident sport anglers throughout Southeast can take 27,700 kings this year, down from 38,250 allocated to the sport sector in 2024.
Alaska residents in 2025 will have a daily sportfishing bag and possession limit of one king, 28 inches or more in length, and no annual limit, Fish and Game announced April 1. In recent years, residents have been allowed to catch and keep two legal-sized kings per day with no annual limit.
For 2025, nonresidents will have a daily bag and possession limit of one king salmon, 28 inches or more in length, and a year-round annual limit of one king.
Many charter operators and fishing lodge owners participating in the Board of Fisheries meeting this year said their businesses would take a big hit if their nonresident client pool were limited to an annual limit of one king in the early season.
Reader Comments(0)