By: Claire Stremple, Alaska Beacon
Sport anglers with a king salmon permit in Southeast Alaska must wait a month to keep their catch after the state’s Department of Fish and Game closed the fishery on Monday.
Department commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang said the closure is not cause for concern about the king salmon population, but because he must ensure that the state stays within its catch limits under the Pacific Salmon Treaty.
“To be honest, we’re a little frustrated,” he said.
He explained that the state has to close the fishery because Alaskans are catching too many fish relative to the limit the state set, which was based on preseason models that showed there would be fewer king salmon. That is an indication that king salmon are more abundant than those models predicted — a “good thing,” he said, “except if you’re an angler that wants to go out fishing for king salmon.”
He said an in-season look at salmon abundance would likely show that king salmon stocks are doing better than those models predicted.
That would be better news if the state wouldn’t be penalized for going over catch limits set in the treaty. Sport anglers are only allowed to catch 20% of the state’s allowed take of king salmon.
“When the abundance of fish is higher than the preseason forecast, these guys go out and catch fish. And if there’s a lot for them to catch, they’re catching more, so they’re going above their 20% allocation,” Vincent-Lang said.
The closure comes seven weeks after the August king salmon season was closed for commercial troll fishers.
In Alaska, the treaty mandates a catch limit for all the commercial and sport fisheries. The total, all-gear catch limit for Southeast Alaska king salmon this year is 211,400 fish.
The state’s Board of Fisheries then allocates the allowed number of fish among different users. First, the seine and gillnet fisheries get a take. This year, that is nearly 9,000 kings for seiners and roughly 7,000 kings for gillnetters. The remainder is split 80%-20% between the trollers and the sport fishery. That leaves the limit for sport anglers at roughly 39,000 fish this year.
So, when in-season projections showed the sport fishery could exceed the limit by 14,500 fish, or nearly 40%, Vincent-Lang said, he had to decide whether to pump the brakes on that fishery or risk going over the treaty limit for all gear types.
Patrick Fowler, the Southeast Alaska Management Coordinator in Petersburg, said the department would calculate the actual number of king salmon sport anglers caught in excess of the catch limit on Wednesday, but had not reported the number by Thursday afternoon. If the total state catch of king salmon is over its limit, the fishery is penalized with a lower limit in the next year.
For the last three years, the catch limits under the treaty have been determined by preseason projections, under what is called the “Chinook model.”
“We establish sport fishing regulations at the beginning of the season, and then we just let them roll,” Fowler said. “The management plan is built on the idea that if the sport fishery goes over, it comes out of the commercial troll quota, and if the sport fishery is under, then (trollers) get the opportunity to harvest those fish.”
He described it as a “give and take.” But this year, since trollers have already stopped fishing for this part of the season, that mechanism cannot absorb as much from the sport fishery.
Fowler said the preseason projections that determine the treaty limits were lower than the in-season reality last year, too.
“We’re following a very similar pattern this year, where we had our indicator of preseason abundance that is not really aligning with how many fish we’re seeing on the fishing grounds,” he said.
Previously, the treaty limits were determined by a model with multiple variables, which allowed managers to make in-season adjustments.
Last year, the sport fishery exceeded its quota by more than 17,100 fish, but the state did not exceed its allocation or go over its all-gear limit because the excess was absorbed by other gear groups.
Sport anglers are catching fish, but overall king salmon abundance has been declining for more than a decade. Last December, when the department issued its 2024 Southeast Alaska Chinook Salmon forecasts, seven of the region’s 11 wild king salmon runs were listed as “stocks of concern,” which means the stock is continuously unable to maintain a harvestable surplus after enough fish have returned to spawn. Those regions have more restrictive management.
There are 130,000 sport anglers in Southeast Alaska, Fowler said, and king salmon are the most sought after species. But this next month is not the peak of the king salmon run; it’s closer to the end before the winter season starts.
“The timing of the season was beneficial in that it’s not prime time for king salmon,” he said. “So hopefully this had minimal disruption, especially those folks that are like traveling to the area to fish.”
Clinton Cook, a vice president with the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and the president of the Craig Tribal Association, said the closure affects tribal members.
“It’s the one salmon we can rely on year round for nutrition,” he said, adding that he’s mostly concerned that trollers had to stop fishing king salmon this August.
“Most of the trollers look forward to that second opening in August to balance out their season,” he said.
This is the first time under the current management model that the sport king salmon fishery has closed in Southeast Alaska, Fowler said. Vincent-Lang said that while there have been closures to the seine fishery, there hasn’t been a closure for the sport fishery like this one in the last six years since he has been fish and game commissioner.
“We’re going to be working with the (Pacific Salmon) Commission to try to adjust that model, so that if, in fact, we see higher levels of runs in the middle of summer, that maybe our catch limits increase or something,” he said.
The Alaska Board of Fishery will work to revise its entire king salmon management policy at its January meeting in Ketchikan.
