North Coast Chinook Troll Fishery Opens 5 Days, Then Closes

The Pacific Fishery Management Council and NOAA Fisheries have compressed the Washington-Oregon commercial troll Chinook fishery to a tight five-day window — 12:01 a.m. Friday, June 12, through 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, June 16, with a 35-Chinook landing and possession limit per vessel — after which the troll fishery between the U.S./Canada border and Cape Falcon closes for the season.

No Alaska fisherman is directly affected. But the action sits inside the same Pacific Salmon Treaty framework that allocates coast-wide Chinook harvest among the U.S., Canada, and among Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and the Columbia River tribes — and the underlying coast-wide Chinook conservation pressure that drove the compression is shared.

The Pacific Salmon Treaty's Chinook chapter, last renegotiated in 2019 and in effect through 2028, sets harvest allocations across the multiple jurisdictions that catch Chinook salmon as they migrate through the northeast Pacific. Southeast Alaska's commercial troll fishery operates under its own PST-derived annual harvest level, managed by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The 2019 agreement was significant for Alaska — Southeast troll Chinook allocations were reduced from the previous chapter's levels in exchange for funding for fishery mitigation, stock enhancement, and habitat work. That trade has been controversial within the Alaska troll fleet, where some operators argue the cuts have not been matched by the promised mitigation flows.

The PFMC's compression of this Washington-Oregon fishery reflects the same coast-wide stock pressure that shapes Alaska's PST framework. Wild Chinook returns across multiple river systems — from California's Sacramento and Klamath to the Snake River's ESA-listed populations to Canada's Fraser River to multiple Yukon River stocks in Alaska — are at depressed levels. Mixed-stock fisheries (where fish from many home rivers mingle in the ocean) make harvest allocation a constant arithmetic problem: every fish caught in any jurisdiction is a fish that can't return to its home river to spawn. The PFMC compression for Washington-Oregon trollers is one in-season response to that arithmetic.

The next PST Chinook chapter renegotiation begins ahead of the 2028 expiration. Decisions like this one, and the corresponding management decisions in Southeast Alaska's troll fishery, are part of the operational reality the next chapter will be negotiated against.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council analyzed a May 16-June 17 open period in one alternative during April planning. NOAA Fisheries published the 2026-2027 specifications in the Federal Register on May 19, then issued Inseason Actions #6 and #7 to compress the opening to the June 12-16 window. For more information on the PFMC fishery, contact Shannon Penna, Anadromous Harvest Management, at (562) 980-4239.