Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Salmon Season Update

Why is the price of wild Alaska salmon so high this year? My wife and I always look for wild Alaska salmon versus farm raised.
We went to Fresh Market down here in GA today looking for salmon. They had wild Alaska sockeye for $27.99 per lbs !!!!
Is it just a really bad season for commercial fishing or what?

Good to hear.

That's not a bad price for Copper River reds if they have been properly cared for and shipped.

Bad season, expect very high prices due to much lower than average runs, so far at least.

Ditto.

Huge operating costs this year due to CV19 related causes.
So far the Bristol Bay run has been more than slugish, processors are operating at 10% to 25% of normal, there are indications that it will pick up soon..... hopefully...

All the above will drive supermarket prices through the roof...

Plus, "All the market will stand plus 10%".

I don't feel bad about our charter caught $20/lb halibut.... or maybe the halibut was free , and the nice boat ride was pricy. Can't decide.

Actually, it was a Groupon half price trip, and they done good. The tip closed the gap.

So did we pay full fare and chipped the tip, or did we over tip?

High finance is so confusing.....

It will be a strange year, no matter how it irons out over the winter.

A charter captain friend in Seward did really well on silvers yesterday. That's much earlier than last year.

No one is catching schitt out here in Area M. We're in a closure right now that reopens on the 5th. Even subsistence fishing is a path to starvation.

Major increase of Reds caught by the test fishing boats at Port Moller, those fish are bound for the Bristol Bay region.
Port Moller is roughly 7 salmon swimming days from the Naknek River in Bristol Bay.

Looks to me like it will be one of those years all the fish come in one huge push.
It makes it more challenging for the processors to handle large numbers all at one time.
Limits could be applied if processors get plugged with overwhelming amounts of fish.

Makes it hard on the fishermen when they set day after day with no fish or small catches and then it builds up to where there are so many fish you could walk across them and their buyers (processors) have to limits catches in order to keep up.

It'd be nice if two spikes of fish come through spreading out the surge and the season just runs a little longer, but I got my doubts.

The Bears are in place along the streams and waiting. And the Salmon seem to be rapidly pushing into the streams this year, rather than stacking by the outlets

We are seeing that here also. We had a bunch of fish jam up the creek when they normally would kinda test the waters a few times before coming up the ladder. These ones have just been blasting up. One weird thing we have been seeing is a huge number of tapeworms coming out of the fish after they are in freshwater for a while. Not sure if its the change from SW to FW that is causing it. No sushi for me thanks!

Are you attempting to id the worms? Are they the new Japanese species from a few years ago?

We haven't tried to ID them. Definitely some kind of tapeworm.

The unusual numbers makes me wonder if they are new and if they will have other impacts.

I haven't heard about anything odd showing up from the processors but then I haven't asked either.
Their quality control labs tear down and inspect those fish all day every day as they pass through their facilities.
They would be looking at all species right now.

I'll ask the direct question here in a day or so....

We used to catch lake trout in NY had guts loaded with tapeworms. Here in a couple of months every bear around will be trailing some around behind them after they get into the fish for a while. I think we are just seeing a lot of them right now is because these fish ran directly up instead of milling around for a bit. On a normal year those tapeworms might have been expelled by the time we see them. This is all just a guess on my part. Will be interesting to see if the processors are seeing anything. We've delivered some fish but nobody has contacted us about anything like that.

Trident in Naknek is taking in about 600K pounds a day now and their QC lab hasn't taken note of anything out of the ordinary as far as parasites go.

With the increase in catches at the Port Moller test site they should be seeing a million to a 1.5M a day soon at their docks in Naknek.



Today’s Daily Catch Index was the highest observed so far this year, but being similar to the previous three days is showing signs of leveling off. Even if the passage rate at the transect peaked today, the run would be at least six days late at Port Moller.

Notice how the distribution of catch indices across the transect shifted in a single day (see Figure 2 in the Catch Update). These results highlight the importance of covering the entire transect and how relatively large catch indices can be missed in between every other station.

The Ocean Cat is headed Northeast of Station 21 to get out of tomorrow’s northwesterly by anchoring near Cape Newenham/Hagemeister Island. The Americanus is getting into Port Moller about now. Tomorrow does not look good for fishing.

PMTF Stock Composition Status: The remaining genetic samples from 7/3 (Stations 8-20) and all of 7/4 samples will arrive in Port Moller tonight. We plan to ship them to Anchorage tomorrow; if it works, estimates will be available Tuesday (7/7).

Summary of catch indices for today are as follows:
Station Index

Stn2 8

Stn3 0

Stn4 23

Stn5 189

Stn6 44

Stn7 130

Stn8 138

Stn9 235

Stn10 291

Stn11 77

Stn12 80

Stn13 Not fished

Stn14 5

Stn15 Not fished

Stn16 156

Stn17 Not fished

Stn18 110

Stn19 45

Stn20 205

Stn21 26

Stn22 Not fished



Daily Index (Stations 2-10) = 101

Cumulative Daily Index (Stations 2-10) = 872

Good to know it’s picking up. My son’s best friend is out in Bristol Bay this year commercial fishing, with an old neighbor of ours. The last time my son talked to them they were not having any luck. My son was asked to go fish with them, but could not get excused from his Guard drill at the end of this month when he asked back in March. Good thing to, as he’s been on active orders for all but two weeks since April.

Price for kings is low. Cohos high. Just got back from 6 days of getting after it. Strange year is about the only way to describe it.