Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska King fishing closure 2025

Bottom draggers are just one part of a bigger problem. Ending trawling would help, but wouldn't have the effect a lot of people think it would. In reality they just catch what's out there. On high abundance years they catch a lot. On low, they don't and most of the kings they catch aren't AK fish but fish returning to BC/WA.

There was an article on the estimated number of sea lions in SE AK. It was a crazy amount approaching 50k. Then they did the math on how much fish each one eats a day. The numbers were mind blowing and made you wonder how any fish where left. I watch them popping up eating halibut after halibut, day after day off Noyes Island. Add in killer whales, whales, birds, other fish etc. What we have seen time and time again is that predator's and "conditions" trump any management you can do on humans for the vast majority of this stuff. Just like the deer. You can manage people to death but one bad winter, cut back trapping for wolves, and let your black bears run out of control and your deer taken out.

From what I understand, Cali is a water issue. AK rivers is a predator/condition's issue.

What’s your guys thoughts on salmon sharks? I was reading that the foreign fleet used to slick them up. We kicked them out to 200 miles and sharks exploded. Any truth to that?

Unless I misunderstand bottom trawlers, they drag the bottom. Thats hard on habitat. Period. When you bulldoze my house over and over again... Regular trawling etc I have almost no issue at all with.

Predators are always an issue, and should also be managed. Its why I shoot every bear and wolf I see at the moment. Not my favorite thing to do but I do it. Sea lions are like turtles in ponds. They eat WAY more than you think they do. We started see more and more otters on the Talkeetna lately too. Not saying but ... coincides with lower fish numbers too.

Lots of issues but if we let those folks drag the bottom its not helping anything at all. You won't have fish left for the predators to eat if the fish don't have a home and a food chain. Food chains as we are talking about are a very fragile thing.

They protect all sharks on the TX coast. 1 shark per day limit. I think that stinks.

I no nothing at all about salmon sharks but other sharks are very predatory and eat a lot. Simply by their size they have to.

When you allow them to grow in numbers one can't help but assume they are a factor too.


So how do you address all of these issues and get some solutions? Without looking I bet sea lion seasons would be like trying to open polar bear again but it shouldn't be that way.

What so many tree huggers don't get, is that no one wants anything wiped out. Just managed for balanced numbers so everyone and everything can have part it in so to speak. So the food chain can work.

Marine mammal protection act would have to be dealt with.

If you’d eradicate 75% of sea lions, you would see things come back quickly. And that’s up and down the coast all the way to California. 35-40% is kings get intercepted by sea lions before going up to spawn on the Columbia?

But they don’t have the stomach to do it.

We get infested with sharks (blue and salmon) some years. They grab almost every halibut coming up. We just keep them with some teeth marks on them. They have to be eating a pile of salmon. Salmon sharks just take everything and you are left with a slack line.

Ocean is a huge place and yes trawlers have bycatch that sounds extreme but I stand by my stance that banning them wouldn’t have the effect a lot of people think it would. Probably zero effect on king salmon and some improvements on halibut. They are banned in SE AK and our rivers struggle with kings returning. Plenty of kings going out of the rivers when young and they aren’t returning.

Right now everyone is pointing fingers at humans as the issue from gear group to gear group. In reality the only humans responsible are the ones who make it impossible to manage predators.

Timely article... Salmon sharks are definitely making a dent. 1 out of 5 kings in the ocean get eaten by salmon sharks. That leaves sea lions and killer whales in the equation too. And the way the congregate in PWS probably much higher on those kings.

https://thecordovatimes.com/2025/02/06/chinook-salmon-gulf-of-alaska-asalmon-sharks/

Additional bycatch information
In the Bering Sea pollock fishery, 35,054 chum salmon were caught through October 10, 2024.
In the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, the 2024 trawl bycatch also included 38,751 Chinook salmon, 48,643 chum salmon, 4.5 million pounds of halibut, 3 million pounds of herring, and 950,680 crabs.
In the Prince William Sound salmon harvest, the 2024 harvest included 9,700 Chinook salmon.

Just a small snippet of the article online by the North Pacific Fisheries Council.
I agree with you that Trawlers aren't problem we have but they are a HUGE problem. Not only are they catching and killing a lot of fish, but they're tearing up the habitat those fish and crabs need to live.
Add in the protected marine Mammal BS, and the environmental issues, and it's no wonder we don't have any fish to sport catch anymore.

BoF manages everything for reds...

The excess fry released by the PWS hatcheries are exactly like the wild fry in every way. They come from the same parent stocks, are hatched, and almost immediately released. Pinks and dogs do not stay in freshwater; they hatch and go to salt. Hatcheries love them because they do not have to feed them.

Reds in the Copper are up because of the hatchery. There is plenty of rearing water, but very little spawning gravel. So they hatch the fish, feed for awhile, and release. They are stocking more than the parent system and that really upped production.

Silvers are showing ocean stress, rather than freshwater. They grow up in freshwater and go to salt for one, two, or three years (usually) with some variation. They are getting smaller, especially on the Kenai, because virtually all are now one year fish. It is more dangerous in Salt and those destined for multiple ocean years are not making it back to spread that DNA.

Yeah it's the halibut/crab that is probably the biggest issue. 38k is a lot of kings but that's because there was a ton in the ocean in 2024. Hit low abundance and you'll see a much smaller number. Unless those genetics are coming back as AK fish they were probably bound for BC/WA. They did the genetics on the homer winter fish and that's where they were headed. Same thing for chums. Hatcheries pump millions and millions out and unless those are yukon chums they are just a drop in the bucket.

So there were a ton of kings in the ocean last year, but very few make it back to the rivers, but it's not an issue when they were swooped up and then dumped overboard dead? I'd rather see a high abundance of fish in the rivers and a very low, or zero number of bycatch.
And it doesn't matter where those fish are headed, Cali or Kenai, we need those fish alive and on the gravel if we ever have a chance of rebuilding the stocks.

There was an article printed in Anchorage a dozen years (or more?) regarding taggents. The theory was that possible foreign "bad actors" had been injection RM taggents (remote monitored) into 2nd year Coho smolt, allowing the actors to monitor via satellite. Theory suggested that if enough smelt were tagged, the possibility to find the adults in open water in the year of their return "might become" a huge detriment to the numbers of return spawners."

Wish now I had saved that🤔

What is the truth? I do not know. Was/is the technology available? Possibly, and yes, in the order of "was/is."

Bhtr

I don't really care as much about wasted bycatch as I do about habitat for the future... If its not destroying habitat or not enough then I'm ok with that part of trawling.

Need to get on the wagon against sea lions then and push the issue.

I see you are saying kings, but that has to apply to all species because other than sockeyes everything is falling and falling fast. I'm just assuming if they prey on kings they prey on it all.

Which brings up sockeyes vs sea lions? Just that many sockeyes currently that the numbers are getting hit hard by sea lions but there are so many its not a big deal so to speak?

I appreciate this discussion. I am learning. Thats always welcome

Tons of kings from the hatcheries in BC and WA and that's why you saw the high number caught in the trawl nets this last year. They can't avoid them. There are so few AK kings in the ocean compared to what the hatcheries pump out down south that come up here that odds are pretty low they are going to get intercepted. And if a few are cuaght it probably isn't in any numbers that would turn things around. The vast majority of kings intercepted in AK in the ocean aren't AK fish, they are hatchery fish that are bred to be caught and managed by the pacific salmon treaty.

SE Alaska all gear quota was in 2024 was 207k of those BC and WA fish as the AK hatchery fish don't count towards that. They all pass by SE AK in May/June/July from up north on the way down. The pacific salmon commission underestimated (again) how many there would be in the ocean and stuck us with a middle tier to catch and again it ended up a high abundance year. We should have had a much higher all gear quota.

One thing about ADFG is the pull scales and genetically test a good amount of kings that hit the dock, both in the sport and commercial fishery. They know what we are catching.

Orca studies show them focusing on the biggest kings as their first choice, always.

I am guessing it would be by far a higher chance of thinning sea lions rather than orca for sure. Orca is probably a battle one would never win.

yeah, that was in interesting study. Orca's a tough on mature kings.

And this from seven (7!) years ago.

https://mustreadalaska.com/outdoor-groups-ask-board-of-fish-to-slow-pink-salmon-hatcheries/