The commercial chum salmon troll fishery at Burnett Inlet 25 miles near Wrangell will open earlier than usual this year. It’s opening on June 27 – usually the fishery starts in early July.
Grant Hagerman is the Region I commercial troll management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
He said the fishery is opening up early for trollers to give them more opportunities. That’s as long as there’s no conflict between the trollers and fishermen who are doing the cost recovery brood stock operations at Burnett. That’s where designated fishermen generate revenue for the nonprofit that runs the hatchery the Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association.
“I’m pretty sure this is the first time that they’ve said, ‘We’re gonna let trollers in there to start the season,'” Hagerman said. “I know they’ve not been in there fishing in June before, so even just a couple days in June is earlier than they’ve been in there before.”
Harvest waters are north of 56°04.65′ N latitude. Fish tickets should have “statistical area 106-25” recorded on them for harvesting.
The fishery will close by emergency order.
SSRAA forecasts roughly 426,000 hatchery-produced summer chum this year and 11,600 fall chum salmon.
Summer chum roughly doubled from 2021 with 246,779, but fall chum decreased by half at 20,403 in that same time period.
