Bristol Bay's sockeye season opens as Nushagak kings raise concern

It's the notice thousands of Bristol Bay fishermen wait for all year. On Saturday, Alaska's Fish and Game managers opened commercial sockeye fishing on the Nushagak and the eastside rivers — the green light that turns a summer of waiting into the few frantic weeks that can make or break a year's income.

And the fish are showing up, pushing up the Nushagak and Wood rivers by the hundreds of thousands. Managers expect a Bristol Bay run of around 45 million sockeye this year — smaller than the enormous runs of the past decade, but still well above the long-term average going back to the 1960s, with every system on track to let enough fish through to spawn.

There's one shadow over it. Nushagak king salmon — the prized Chinook that share these waters — are running thin, and because the sockeye fishery is mixed-stock, kings can end up in nets set for reds. Fish and Game hasn't restricted fishing over the king numbers, but it's watching them closely. Conservation advocates say the kings are too depleted to justify business-as-usual openings — a position the agency hasn't adopted, but one that will hang over the season as it plays out.