Southeast winter troll king season opens Oct. 11, with five inside areas closed

Southeast Alaska and Yakutat commercial trollers can start fishing winter Chinook at 12:01 am Sunday, Oct. 11, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Oct. 2. The season runs through March 15, 2027, or until the fleet lands 45,000 Chinook that aren't from Alaska hatcheries, whichever comes first. Kings from Alaska hatcheries don't count toward that cap.

Five stretches of inside water stay closed "to conserve wild Southeast Alaska/Yakutat Chinook salmon stocks": Gastineau Channel, Berners Bay, part of Behm Canal, waters west of the Stikine River around Mitkof Island, and Section 15-A north of Sherman Rock, which is closed only through Dec. 31, 2026.

At its 2025 meeting in Ketchikan, the Alaska Board of Fisheries directed the department to use its emergency-order authority to protect wild Southeast and Transboundary River Chinook while still finding a compatible harvest. Under that direction, the department found wild fish remained a low share of the catch on the outer coast and extended last winter's fishery through April 15, 2026, in some outer coastal waters. It will use data from this winter to decide whether to add time after March 15, 2027.

In the 2024-2025 winter season, trollers caught 31,518 Chinook, with 262 permits fished, according to the department's management plan for the following season. In 2023-2024, they caught 48,117 and harvested the full winter allocation.