Chinook Salmon, Adult Male (Scanned from plates in Evermann, Barton Warren; Goldsborough, Edmund Lee (1907) The Fishes of Alaska, Washington, D.C.: Department of Commerce and Labor Bureau of Fisheries)

Alaska’s Board of Fisheries approved a regional plan for king salmon management this month and revised the 2019 restrictions. Most Alaskan residents will get an extra opportunity to fish.

When the commercial harvest is bad, sport fishing can be restricted or closed. That’s the case this year. Sport fishing will be closed on inside waters in Spring. But in the late season, the king salmon bag limit increases for residents. Except in the Upper Lynn Canal.

“We have an extra layer of protection under the Chilkat River King Salmon Management Plan,” says Richard Chappell, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Area Manager. “That just is designed to protect our stock of king salmon in the terminal waters near the mouth of the Chilkat River.”

The Chilkat River King Salmon escapement is critically low again this year. Chappell says the dramatic decline in returns started in 2007.

In most areas of southeast, the heavier king salmon restrictions will lift in late summer —  Alaska residents will have a two bag limit. But the Chilkat Inlet hasn’t seen any recovery, so it continues to be closed to sport fishing. That’s been true for the last four years and it sounds like it’s going to be awhile longer. Chappell says the fishery won’t open again until the area sees a few years of comeback.

“The king salmon have fallen on hard times in the Lynn Canal and throughout Southeast Alaska, says Chappell. “Of all the smelt that hits the ocean we expect maybe one percent of them to survive to be large fish that are either caught in a fishery or spawn in the Chilkat River. It used to be up around five or six percent in the good old days.”

Marine conditions have changed and fish are surviving at a lower rate than they used to. Chappell says they are still working to figure out why.