Deckhand Berett Wilber anticipates the end of the summer troll season, once she offloads this pile of cohos from the F/V Alexa K. Cohos this summer were running a pound heavier than the 10-year average. (Charlie Wilber photo)
The second summer troll opening for king salmon in Southeast Alaska is finally over.
The 22-day opening was the second-longest on record for the fishery, which is scheduled by the Department of Fish & Game only after it’s gotten a handle on the number of fish landed during the first summer troll opening on July 1st.
And it’s highly variable. Last year, for instance, there was no second opener for kings at all. In 2012 the second opener went on for a record 29 days.
Troll management biologist Pattie Skannes runs the numbers for the department.
She expected that trollers would mop up the 73,000 kings remaining in this year’s quota a lot faster than 22 days, based on the success of first five day opener in July. But the fishing started out slow in August, and only got worse.
“Catch rates started out at about 15 (kings) per boat per day. And during the last week, the average catch per day was only 10.”
Part of the problem may have been weather, which Skannes says favored bigger boats this year. The best salmon fishing is typically offshore. August was not a very inviting month to be on the ocean. Skannes says many trollers stayed tied up.
“One thing that we noticed that was different: Not only did we count fewer permits when we did our aerial surveys than we expected, but when we looked at the actual days fished during the opening it was surprisingly low. We had a lot of bad weather, and I know that affected how many days people fished, and whether they fished at all.”
Skannes thinks that when all the fish tickets are in, trollers will have landed around 74,000 kings by the time fishing closed on September 3rd. That puts the catch-to-date for kings in Southeast over 176,000.
Prices for kings have climbed steadily over the summer. Trollers were earning $5 per pound in July for fish weighing a little over 11 pounds. The average weight is now just over 12 pounds, and the price in the last week of fishing jumped to just under $9.
Skannes expects trolling for silver salmon — or cohos — to continue through the expected close of the season on September 20, with a possible 10-day extension. At 8 pounds, coho are a pound heavier than the ten-year average for the species.
“We’ve got some extra-large fish out there and trollers tell us that they’re just beautiful — very high quality.”
Cohos have been bringing $1.88 per pound at the dock. And chum — though a far cry from the huge runs of a decade ago — are biting. Trollers have landed 17,500 of them in Sitka Sound this summer, fishing only one day a week, in turn with seiners and gillnetters.
The next king salmon accounting year starts with the opening of the Winter Troll Fishery on October 11 — but Skannes won’t be in charge. She’s retiring at the end of September after nearly 40 years working in Southeast fisheries.
Nevertheless, she’ll have have salmon on the brain.
“I probably always be thinking about fishing and fish, and trollers. You don’t just stop thinking about it. I imagine I still will be.”
The name of her successor and the next manager of Southeast Alaska’s troll fisheries has not been officially released.
