Sport Fishing Share Of Chinook Increased

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Created on Friday, 07 February 2025 15:28

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By ANNA LAFFREY
Ketchikan Daily News
Some of the commercial, hook-and-line troll fishery’s allocation of migratory chinook salmon will be reallocated to the nonresident/resident sport fishery following a 5-2 ruling by the Alaska Board of Fisheries on the tenth day of its 13-day Southeast Alaska/Yakutat finfish and shellfish regulatory meeting in Ketchikan.
Board members voted on Thursday to adopt state regulatory language that shifts the troll/sport chinook allocation from the 80 percent/20 percent troll/sport split that’s been in place since 1996, to a new 77 percent/23 percent split for the troll and sport fisheries, respectively.
Board Chair Märit Carlson-Van Dort led the first troll/sport allocation change in almost 30 years by submitting Board meeting “record copy” number 140 on Wednesday, which recommended a 75/25 troll/sport allocation split, and a number of changes to the King Salmon Management Plan that governs the sport fishery in Southeast.
During the Board’s Thursday deliberations over the “KSMP and allocation,” Board Member Mike Wood proposed a winning amendment to RC140 that affected the new 77/23 percent troll/sport allocation split on top of the sport fishery management provisions laid out by Carlson-Van Dort. 
RC140, which Alaska Department of Fish and Game prepared at the chairwoman’s request, amended Proposal 109 that Jacqueline Foss, a Sitka-based commercial troll fisherman, submitted last year.
As written, Foss’ Proposal 109 would have maintained the 80/20 percent troll/sport split, required in-season management of sport harvest, protected a stable resident bag and possession limit of 2 king salmon at all chinook allocation levels, and designed nonresident harvest limits to achieve 70 percent of the combined nonresident/resident sport harvest of king salmon before July 1.
Carlson-Van Dort’s RC amended Foss’ proposal to move some troll fishery allocation to the sport fishery, to provide uninterrupted resident chinook harvest opportunities in state waters, and to require ADF&G to use in-season management to keep the sport sector from exceeding its allocation by first placing harvest limits on nonresident sport harvest.
Nonresident harvest has comprised about 75 percent of sport harvest in recent years.
Southeast Regional Fisheries Management Coordinator Patrick Fowler explained during Board deliberations on Thursday that RC140 would affect a “static resident bag and possession limit that ranges from one to three.”
“In periods of low allocation, the resident bag and possession limit would be one, essentially the middle ground is two, and then high allocation levels is three,” Fowler said.
Depending on the Southeast chinook allocation, and resultant resident limits in a given year, ADF&G “would then project what the resident harvest is going to be in that season, given the allocation (and) the expected harvest rates, and then the remaining allocation could go to the nonresident sector, which the department has broad authority to establish, bag, possession, annual limits and season dates to stay within the sport fish allocation by adjusting the nonresident management provisions,” Fowler stated.
RC140 also would give the ADF&G commissioner flexibility to transfer any unused chinook allocation for any gear group to any other gear group as needed.
Carlson-Van Dort introduced RC140 midday Wednesday, just before the Board opened its town-hall-style “committee of the whole” proceedings over the formal chinook management proposals at hand for its Southeast meeting.
The RC caused some confusion during the afternoon “committee” session, as many meeting participants hadn’t had a chance to review the substitute language for Proposal 109.
The Board stood down its “committee” for 25 minutes on Wednesday so that audience members could digest two fresh RCs by Carlson-Van Dort.
Upon resuming the “committee,” public members spoke regarding the idea of reallocating chinook harvest quota. Ten people asked the Board to maintain the 80/20 percent troll/sport split, and five people supported some reallocation to the sport sector as proposed with RC140.
For months ahead of the meeting, Southeast fishery stakeholders had mulled 18 formal regulatory proposals regarding the state’s allocation of migratory chinook between the troll and sport sectors, a topic of contention in recent years.
One of those formal Board proposals (113) would have increased the sport allocation of king salmon from 20 percent to up to 25 percent of the overall troll/sport chinook allocation.
Nine local ADF&G Advisory Committees in Southeast opposed Proposal 113, and no local ACs supported the proposal. In other on-time public comments to the Board, 120 individuals, organizations, businesses and governments opposed Proposal 113 to increase the sport allocation of king salmon; 29 individuals, organizations and businesses supported the proposal.
Meanwhile, five advisory committees supported Foss’ Proposal 109, and three opposed it. Fifty-seven identities supported Proposal 109, while 29 supported it with amendments, and 68 individuals and charter fishing businesses opposed it.
During Board deliberations on Thursday, Board members picked up Foss’ Proposal 109, and made a unanimous motion to adopt the substitute language that Carlson-Van Dort provided in RC140.
Carlson-Van Dort said that implementing a 75/25 troll/sport allocation shift, along with the management tools provided in RC140, would “provide the department with flexibility to manage” chinook harvest in-season, up to the Southeast “all-gear harvest” limit that’s set according to the U.S./Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty.
Some audience members in Ketchikan’s Ted Ferry Civic Center groaned and shouted as Board Member Greg Svendsen described how the overall annual revenue in the sport harvest sector stacks up against the commercial troll sector, mispronouncing troll as “trawl” during his remarks. He cited a guided sport industry funded report that indicated a guided sport harvested king salmon has substantially greater economic benefit than a troll-caught king.
ADF&G Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang then explained how, under the regulatory language provided in RC140, he would each year “subtract” the projected resident sport fish harvest “off of the sport fish allocation, and I’ll be managing the charter, the nonresident sport fishery in-season to ensure that the overall sport allocation isn’t exceeded.
“So, I’m probably going to be managing, because it’s in-season, I’m going to be managing the nonresidents sport fishery conservatively,” said Vincent-Lang.
Board Member Mike Wood then made a motion to amend the numbers in Carlson-Van Dort’s proposed RC140 from a 75/25 percent troll/sport split to the 77/23 percent split that ultimately won Board approval.
Wood stated that the reallocation “is a management buffer that comes from the troll fleet to make sure that the resident (sport fishermen) have fish, especially in a time of low abundance.”
“I want to make expressly clear that that three percent that comes from the trollers, which is 80, should, if there’s (allocation remaining) at the end of the season, should get looped back by (ADF&G emergency order) in August for the trollers to catch,” Wood said.
“That is my intent, and I guess from the 30,000-foot view coming into this, those are the numbers I finally was comfortable with to help the management do the very best job that they can do to make sure that there are guardrails on this ... sport fishing management plan,” Wood said.
Board Member Stan Zuray spoke in favor of Wood’s amendment as “in line with what I feel is best.”
Speaking in opposition to RC140 as amended by Wood, Board Member Tom Carpenter said that “I do not feel that this 3 percent buffer is going to guarantee the residents a king salmon priority when it comes to, especially the inside waters,” most of which are closed until June 15 due to chinook “stocks of concern.”
Carpenter later said that the reduction of troll quota would “affect very small communities in Southeast Alaska, from Pelican all the way down to Ketchikan, mostly on the outer coast,” and have a “giant impact on those communities” where tribal citizens reside.
Carlson-Van Dort was supportive of Wood’s amended language for the 77/23 split “because I think it is reflective of the overall sort of historical harvest in the sport fish sector, including the resident priority in times of mid, medium to low abundance.”
Board Member Curtis Chamberlain supported Wood’s amendment because, as a lawyer and mediator, he knows he’s “done a good job when both sides walk away really equally unhappy.”
Board members voted six to one to support Wood’s amendment, with Carpenter opposed.
Discussing RC140 as amended by Wood, Board Member Gerad Gofrey expressed “problems” with how the Board sometimes “pivots” with RCs and amendments changing “particularly contentious proposals like this.”
“I didn’t come to Ketchikan with the intent of making switches to the allocation of 80/20,” Godfrey said, indicating that he would oppose the motion to adopt RC140 as amended.
Wood acknowledged that the reallocation is “a slap in the face to these Alaska residents” who comprise more than 80% of the commercial troll fleet.
Before voting on RC140, as amended by Wood, ADF&G Extended Jurisdiction Program Manager Dani Evenson laid out how the proposal, as amended, would comply with provisions of both the Pacific Salmon Treaty and the Endangered Species Act. 
Evenson said that the reallocation could affect an annual transfer of chinook from the troll to the sport sector to the tune of between 2,750 and 8,320 chinook, depending on the Southeast all-gear treaty catch limit for a given year.
Evenson illustrated that, in a low-abundance year with an all-gear treaty catch limit of 100,000 chinook, 2,750 chinook would be reallocated given the new 77/23 split; in a high-abundance year with 300,000 migratory chinook available for Southeast, about 8,320 chinook would effectively be reallocated from trollers to sport fishermen.     Carlson-Van Dort then echoed some of her colleagues’ earlier words of caution over the imminent reallocation of chinook harvest quota from the troll sector to the charter sector.
Carlson-Van Dort said that she thinks it would “behoove” the sport industry to “regulate themselves before you are regulated, your opportunity, entirely, potentially.
The Board then voted 5-2 to approve the language provided in Carlson-Van Dort’s RC140, as amended by Wood to provide for a 77/23 split, with Carpenter and Godfrey voting “no.”
After the vote, Jacqueline Foss reflected on the outcome of Proposal 109 that she crafted last year to maintain the historic 80/20 split, and require in-season management, among other sport fishery management measures.
“I’m not happy that my proposal was used to reduce allocation for trollers,” Foss said as the meeting adjourned around 4 p.m. on Thursday.
She said that the Board’s decision “did not create a buffer, it reallocated.”

Other Board actions
Among other actions on Thursday, the Board voted in unanimous support of Carlson-Van Dort’s Wednesday RC139, which builds off of Proposal 131, to allow ADF&G’s commissioner to open a limited harvest troll fishery for chinook any time after Aug. 1, following trollers’ initial July 1 treaty chinook opening, if sufficient all-gear chinook allocation remains.
The Board also voted in unanimous support of Proposal 129 to increase the number of days open in the Yakutat Bay spring troll fishery from one day to two days each week, and Proposal 125 to close sport fishing for king salmon in District 14A while the Taku and King Salmon Rivers chinook “stock of concern” action plan is in effect.
At 8:30 a.m. today, the Board began its fifth “committee” session over rules for commercial, sport and personal use salmon and trout regulations, and salmon enhancement-related proposals, including a proposal (156) that would “reduce the permitted egg take of pink and chum salmon of each applicable Southeast hatchery for pink and chum salmon by 25%.” Group five deliberations were scheduled to follow this  afternoon.
Committee proceedings and deliberations on all Southeast herring fishery proposals are scheduled for Saturday.
All meeting documents, including a summary of Board actions on proposals, are available online at bit.ly/SoutheastBOF.

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