Trollers to get third limited chinook opening in Southeast Alaska

Trollers ply the waters around Eastern Channel while fishing for salmon earlier this season. (James Poulson / Daily Sitka Sentinel)

By Daily Sitka Sentinel staff

Each Southeast troll fisherman can harvest another 15 chinook salmon during a “limited harvest fishery" opening that’s set to begin Thursday, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Monday.

In the ten-day fishery, which is the third limited harvest opening of the summer season, trollers can take about 5,400 chinook that remain in the allocation for all the commercial gear groups that harvest chinook in Southeast.

By state regulation, ADF&G at the end of the summer season may give trollers the opportunity to harvest any chinook allocation that remains for the commercial seiners and gill netters. The late-season boost is welcome news for trollers, who are feeling the squeeze of a record-low allocation for migratory chinook this year.

As the opening begins, the National Weather Service forecast for the Sitka area is for a storm with heavy rain and strong southeast winds of 15 to 25 mph from early Wednesday through Thursday night.

The summer chinook season began on July 1 with the usual competitive opening that lasted just four days, during which 460 trollers harvested about 44,000 chinook. 

Going into the second opening of the summer, fishery managers said that too few chinook (about 9,000 fish) remained on the troll allocation to support a competitive opening, and scheduled a limited harvest fishery instead.

The department required trollers to register to participate in the first limited harvest opening that began Aug. 8; registration isn't required for the opening that begins Thursday.

More than 550 permit-holders registered for the first LHF, so each troller was allowed to harvest 17 chinook. Fish & Game data shows that 386 trollers participated, and caught about 4,700 fish from the harvest target of about 9,000 chinook.

In the second limited harvest fishery, which began Aug. 24, about 6,800 chinook were available to trollers, including about 1,900 fish that managers withheld as a "buffer" for troll fishery management throughout the year.

Each troller was allowed to harvest 18 fish in the second opening; preliminary fish ticket data shows that 331 troll permit-holders harvested about 4,400 chinook, Fish and Game said in an update on Friday.

The limited harvest fisheries this past month were a first for trollers, and were in line with a February rule change by the Alaska Board of Fisheries allowing ADF&G to open LHFs in August if too few chinook remained in the allocation to support a competitive opening.

Before the rule-change, these non-competitive LHF openings could occur only in September, following the July 1 opening, which is managed to harvest about 70 percent of trollers’ summer chinook allocation, with a competitive opening in August targeting the fish remaining in allocation.

• This story was originally published by the Daily Sitka Sentinel.