Southeast Alaska fishermen discovered last week that harvest limits for chinook salmon in 2025 will be almost 40% less than last year’s.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced an overall allocation of 130,800 treaty chinook salmon — fish that didn’t originate in Alaska hatcheries — for all gear groups targeting chinook in waters off Southeast Alaska and Yakutat in 2025.

In recent years, Southeast Alaska’s all-gear allocation has ranged between a high of 355,600 treaty kings in 2016 down to 130,000 in 2018, Fish and Game records show. The regionwide chinook quota for all commercial and sport fishermen averaged about 200,900 chinook each year from 2020 through 2024.

This year’s all-gear catch limit was set based on measures of chinook abundance calculated by the Pacific Salmon Commission’s “Chinook model,” and did not incorporate annual data from the winter troll fishery in Sitka Sound, which the commission used in recent years through 2023 to estimate the abundance of chinook in Southeast, and to set the all-gear allocation for the region.

The Pacific Salmon Commission is the entity that implements the U.S.-Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty and regulates fishing for migratory chinook populations along the west coast of both countries.

The commission allocates chinook salmon catch between the U.S. and Canada, and the Alaska Board of Fisheries approves management plans to split Alaska’s allocation between different gear types and user groups.

ADF&G Policy Coordinator Dani Evenson said that the 2025 allocation is “the lowest chinook harvest limit on record” for Southeast; the slightly lower preseason figure in 2018 included additional conservative measures.

Evenson said the record-low quota this year is due in large part to a poor forecast for four of the seven chinook “stock aggregates that really drive our mixed-stock chinook fisheries.”

Ketchikan area chinook sport restrictions

The four chinook stocks that “aren’t doing well,” driving the low PSC allocation for Southeast, are: Fraser River summer run chinook (South Thompson), West Coast Vancouver Island, Columbia River summer run chinook (part of the Columbia summer/fall complex), and Washington Coast chinook, Evenson said.

The 2025 allocation is affecting major cuts to bag limits for resident and nonresident sport anglers, as well as a steep drop in the commercial troll harvest quota, and a smaller allocation for the commercial net fisheries throughout Southeast.

John Murray, who serves in the power troll seat on the Sitka Advisory Committee to ADF&G, said today that he “expected a decrease” in the PSC’s allocation for Southeast this year, but anticipated “maybe a 10 to 15 percent decrease.”

Murray said he’s still “trying to digest” the dramatic cut of almost 40% to the all-gear harvest quota.

Commercial hook-and-line troll fishermen have already lamented the loss of chinook fishing quota this year in the wake of a 5-2 vote by the Board of Fisheries in Ketchikan in February to reallocate some of the troll fishery’s chinook allocation to the growing sport fishing sector.

The board’s ruling shifted troll/sport chinook allocation from the 80%/20% troll/sport split that’s been in place since 1996, to a new 77%/23% split for the troll and sport fisheries, following the usual reductions for commercial net fisheries.

Fish and Game announced April 1 that this year the commercial troll fishery can catch up to 92,700 treaty chinook, down 60,300 fish from last year’s preseason harvest limit of 153,000 chinook.

This 40% reduction to the troll quota will mean “less effort for sure” in the troll sector, Murray said.

“A lot of people are going to have what I call latent permits, maybe they make most of their money from longlining, so many of those folks wouldn’t be coming out this year,” Murray said. “If you could make a living doing something else, pounding nails, you might consider doing something else.”

Norm Pillen, the president of Seafood Producers Cooperative, said the low allocation is “very concerning” for processors like SPC, as chinook is “one of our highest-margin products” and “very important to our fleet.”

“We are on a continual downward slide on fleet participation” given reductions in “opportunity to catch high-value fish like chinook,” Pillen said. “There’s a lot of demand out there for that product, and not being able to fill that demand we face a potential loss of market share.”

Meanwhile, resident and nonresident anglers throughout Southeast can take 27,700 chinook this year, down from 38,250 chinook allocated to the sport sector in 2024.

Alaska residents in 2025 will have a daily bag and possession limit of one king salmon, 28 inches or more in length, and no annual limit, Fish and Game announced. In recent years, residents have been allowed to catch and keep two legal-sized king salmon per day with no annual limit.

Steve Ramp, who holds the resident sport fishing seat on the Sitka AC, explained Wednesday that “residents went from two king salmon a day to one king salmon a day, and that’s year round.”

Nonresident sport fishermen, many of whom travel to Southeast Alaska for the chance to catch and keep multiple king salmon, are seeing a “drastic reduction” in opportunity, Ramp said.

For 2025, nonresidents have a daily bag and possession limit of one king salmon, 28 inches or more in length, and a year-round annual limit of one king salmon.

Many charter operators and fishing lodge owners participating in the Board of Fish meeting this year said that their businesses would take a big hit if their nonresident client pool were limited to an annual limit of one king salmon in the early season.

Nonresident sport anglers “usually start the season at one a day, three a year, until July 1,” Ramp explained Wednesday. “Then it drops to two a year until July 15 and then it drops to one a year. That’s the norm that we’ve seen lately.”

Ramp said Wednesday that, as soon as he “heard the news” of bag limit reductions for 2025, “I went down to the department to talk to the sport fish guys and gals, and I wanted to know what drove the reductions,” Ramp said today.

“I was told that, due to a drastic reduction in the (PSC) abundance index by the Pacific Salmon Treaty, that drove the department action to reduce bag limits for sport fishermen,” Ramp said.

“Once I heard that, I thought, ‘I can support the reduction if the abundance index data is accurate,’” Ramp said. “I’m not saying it is accurate or it isn’t, but at least the reduction is based on some supposed scientific method saying there’s less salmon out there, less king salmon.

Ramp noted that many fishermen feel that the PSC abundance estimates that determine Southeast catch limits for migratory chinook have been biased low, compared to what is seen on the ground, which has resulted in low catch limits as well as user group disputes in recent years.

Nevertheless, “The (abundance index) is the system that is in use,” Ramp said. “Since the reduction in bag limits for sport fishermen is based on that, I can support that to protect the species. … I’ve always been of the feeling that if the stocks are in trouble, we all have to take the hit and take less fish.”

Murray said that he’s hoping for “a statement” from ADF&G “on why the all-gear catch limit is so low” this year.

“There should be an announcement on why it’s so low so that people can understand,” Murray said.

Announcing the low all-gear limit, ADF&G noted that “ADF&G members of the treaty Chinook Technical Committee have reviewed the Chinook model inputs and outputs. ADF&G scientists will continue to pursue alternative models and methods to set SEAK catch limits in the future.”

Chinook returns throughout Southeast are doing relatively well, ADF&G stated.

“The preseason outlook is improved for four SEAK Chinook salmon stocks — the Situk, Chilkat, Taku, and Unuk rivers which are forecasted above escapement goals” for 2025.

“The Stikine River, however, has a below-goal forecast and has missed its escapement goal in 9 consecutive years,” ADF&G said.

Given “poor” chinook returns on the Stikine, as well as the King Salmon River, Andrew Creek, and Chickamin River … “the management regime will continue to be conservative to minimize catches of Southeast Alaska Chinook salmon in 2025,” ADF&G said.

• This story was originally published by the Daily Sitka Sentinel.