Local trollers are enduring slow chinook salmon fishing, and hoping that catch rates will pick up soon in the spring troll fishery areas that have opened near Sitka beginning May 1.
In a phone call from the Goddard fishery area Thursday, troller John Murray said that spring trolling near Sitka has been “slow this year, visibly slow,” and that he’s beginning to question whether local hatchery chinook will turn up in strong numbers.
The spring fishery tends to peak in mid-June as local hatchery-produced chinook return to their hatchery release sites, and Alaska Department of Fish and Game managers open more fishery areas on more days of the week. The fishery also intercepts chinook that don’t originate from Alaska hatcheries.
As of today, 119 permit-holders have harvested a total of 3,121 chinook from the 11 fishery areas that ADF&G has opened throughout Southeast Alaska.
Sixty-six trollers have taken 2,098 chinook from waters near Sitka, where fish are weighing in at an average of 11.2 pounds, ADF&G data show. Areas near Craig and Yakutat also have seen some harvest.
Participation and harvests are down compared to recent years. At this time last year, 83 trollers fishing in areas near Sitka had landed 4,438 chinook, per ADF&G data.
ADF&G says buyers are paying an average $9.25 per pound for chinook from the fishery areas near Sitka this year. Fishermen report that local processors are paying $8.50 per pound, and that independent or direct marketers are paying slightly more than that. The current prices are on par with spring chinook fisheries over the last five years.
Sitka troller Jeff Farvour said from the Redoubt area Wednesday that it’s been a “slower” year. Water temperatures are lower than he’s used to seeing for the time of year, and he’s seen a good amount of “feed” on his depth sounder, he said.
Murray said he’s “trying to be optimistic” despite some “miserable” days that have yielded low chinook harvests, or brought gnarly weather.
Wednesday “was the first day that I could say it looked like local hatchery fish were really in the mix” in the Redoubt area, indicating that fishing could pick up soon, he said.
The fishermen noted that strong chinook returns are expected to reach the Northern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association facilities near Sitka.
NSRAA projects that 29,320 chinook will return to its facilities this year, with the large majority (24,700) returning to the Medvejie release site. Last year, 21,777 chinook turned up at all NSRAA facilities after the association projected that 14,250 would return.
Spring troll fishery openings are designed to provide trollers access to these hatchery chinook as they return in May and June.
ADF&G managers schedule openings to maximize trollers’ harvest of local hatchery chinook, rather than the non-Alaska hatchery-produced chinook that are counted against the annual Southeast allocation under the terms of the Pacific Salmon Treaty.
With the spring fishery, there are “a lot of opportunities here in Sitka versus the rest of the region” due to the relatively high number of chinook produced by NSRAA, said Fish & Game Troll Fishery Biologist Grant Hagerman.
ADF&G managers provide trollers with “time each week in each of the fishery areas based on what the catch looks like,” tailoring openings toward intercepting hatchery fish, Hagerman explained.
Managers count the number of hatchery chinook in trollers’ harvest by analyzing the “coded wires tags” recovered from fish landed at seafood processing facilities throughout the season.
The higher the proportion of Alaska-produced hatchery fish caught in a fishery area, the more non-Alaska-hatchery chinook trollers are allowed to catch in that area.
That “gives us managers the flexibility to give trollers more time” to fish in a given area, Hagerman said. “We want to get trollers to as many of those (hatchery) fish as we can.”
The “NSRAA forecast is higher this year than the last few years,” Hagerman said, so managers are “anticipating some decent hatchery percentages coming up for this month” which could trigger more opportunities for trollers.
Meanwhile, the “forecast for coastwide, mixed-stock chinook fisheries is down,” Hagerman said. “We’re anticipating a better proportion of Alaska hatchery fish, but we haven’t quite seen that yet.”
The next “two or three weeks in a lot of these facilities is kind of the peak return.”
“Before those Alaska hatchery fish are around, we’re very careful about providing opportunity,” Hagerman said. “As those Alaska hatchery fish show up in June is when we tend to liberalize and give more time” to trollers.
“It could change a lot in the next few weeks,” Hagerman said.
