# Cook Inlet salmon harvest Cumulative commercial harvest and the season scoreboard for the Cook Inlet area, from ADF&G's Blue Sheet _Data through Sep 7, 2026 · source last checked Sep 6, 2026, 7:00 PM PT · page revised Sep 7, 2026_ > Cook Inlet all species together are 1.17M fish, 111% of the 1.06M fish area forecast; its marquee sockeye run is 970K fish sockeye, comparable commercial forecast not published. ## The numbers | Species | Harvest to date | Preseason forecast | % of forecast | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Sockeye | 970K fish | 469K fish | no comparable forecast | | Coho | 78K fish | 94K fish | 83% | | Pink | 38K fish | 381K fish | 10% | | Chum | 86K fish | 113K fish | 76% | | All species | 1.17M fish | 1.06M fish | 111% | ### Ex-vessel prices, 2025 season (preliminary finals, published months after the season, not a current in-season price) | Species | Avg price | Avg weight | Fish harvested | Total ex-vessel value | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Chinook | $3.46/lb | 9.6 lb | 332 fish | $11,025 | | Sockeye | $1.77/lb | 5.4 lb | 4.23M fish | $40.2M | | Coho | $0.61/lb | 5.1 lb | 115K fish | $355,584 | | Pink | $0.26/lb | 3.1 lb | 576K fish | $458,570 | | Chum | $0.41/lb | 6.4 lb | 135K fish | $352,464 | ## About Cook Inlet salmon harvest Upper and Lower Cook Inlet drift and set gillnet, a sockeye fishery close to Anchorage that shares its runs with a large sport and personal-use dipnet fishery. This page tracks Cook Inlet's cumulative commercial salmon harvest from ADF&G's Blue Sheet, by species, against the area's preseason forecast. The numbers are common-property and cost-recovery catch in thousands of fish, preliminary and updated through the season; sport, subsistence and personal-use harvests are not included. Percent of forecast is a share of the full-season projection, not a good-or-bad call, and it climbs as each species opens and peaks: early low percentages are the run still building, not a weak year. Scope note: no Upper Cook Inlet commercial sockeye forecast is published (UCI sockeye appears only as about 5.60 million fish available to all user groups), while the harvest here is the combined Upper and Lower Cook Inlet catch. Because the numerator and denominator would not share geography, no completion percent is shown for Cook Inlet sockeye. For reference, the Lower Cook Inlet commercial sockeye forecast is 469,000 fish (202,000 natural plus 267,000 hatchery). In the ex-vessel table, value is that species' whole-season total in dollars as ADF&G prints it, not a per-fish or per-pound figure, so a species with a few hundred fish shows a total of a few dollars. Upper and Lower Cook Inlet are effectively two fisheries under one heading. Upper Cook Inlet is the sockeye fishery, drift gillnet in the central inlet and set gillnet along the east-side beaches, intercepting runs bound for the Kenai and Kasilof rivers. Lower Cook Inlet is smaller and leans on hatchery pink production around Kachemak Bay. No other area on this site is managed under as much allocation pressure. The same Kenai sockeye run supports a commercial fleet, one of the largest sport fisheries in the state and a personal-use dipnet fishery at the river mouth open to Alaska residents, all inside a road-connected part of the state where every user group is present and organized. Commercial openings are set against in-river escapement goals with those other users counted, so a management decision here reflects allocation as well as abundance, and a closed commercial period does not necessarily mean a weak run. ## About this data - Source: ADF&G Preliminary Alaska Commercial Salmon Catch Report (Blue Sheet), over the April preseason forecast - Series: Cumulative commercial harvest by species and percent of forecast - Basis: Common-property and hatchery cost-recovery catch, preliminary - Geography: Cook Inlet - Unit: thousand fish - Calculation period: Cumulative in-season - Last observation: Sep 7, 2026 - Update frequency: Up to twice daily in season --- Cite: Cook Inlet salmon harvest: 970K fish sockeye, comparable commercial forecast not published as of Sep 7, 2026 (The Run). The Run. https://therun.news/district/cook-inlet Canonical URL: https://therun.news/district/cook-inlet