Alaska Chinook salmon harvest

This page tracks Alaska's statewide commercial chinook salmon harvest, known in the fleet as kings, from ADF&G's Blue Sheet, against the preseason forecast, with the harvest broken out by fishing area. Figures 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.

Chinook in Alaska's catch and value

In the 2026 season, ADF&G's preliminary figures put Alaska's commercial Chinook harvest at 222K fish averaging 10.3 lb, worth $18.7M at the dock. That is less than 1% of the 98.9M fish the five species together landed and 3% of their $648.3M ex-vessel value. That works out to about $84.24 a fish, the highest of the five species. The table below the chart breaks the same season out by area. For how the species compare in the market, see sockeye vs pink salmon: the five species and their markets.

How the 2026 Chinook season ran

ADF&G's April 2026 projection called for 197,000 commercial kings statewide, the forecast in the table above, and Southeast Alaska lands nearly all of them, most on troll gear. Southeast fishes to a Pacific Salmon Treaty limit rather than a run forecast: 146,000 treaty kings for the troll fleet in the year to September 30, 2026, with most Alaska hatchery kings not counted against it. The Southeast page has the period-by-period detail.

Everywhere else, kings were the fish other fisheries closed to protect:

• Copper River: a 33,000-fish run forecast, 27% below the 10-year average, kept water inside the river mouth closed from the May 22 opener; the count of large kings at the Miles Lake sonar was the lowest in eight seasons and ended near the low end of the 21,000 to 31,000 goal (Prince William Sound).
• Cook Inlet: a Kenai River late-run forecast of 12,718 large kings, under the 14,250 trigger, closed the east side set gillnet fishery for the year on February 11 (Cook Inlet).
• Kodiak: after Karluk River king escapements of 379, 76 and 93 from 2023 to 2025 against a 3,000 to 6,000 goal, the Karluk and Northwest Kodiak waters stayed closed from June 1 through July 5, and seiners had to release kings 28 inches or longer from June 9 (Kodiak).
• Chignik: a stock of concern that missed its 1,300 to 2,700 goal in six of seven years; seiners had to release kings 28 inches or longer, and more than 1,000 kings in 48 hours before July 31 would close the areas responsible for seven days (Chignik).
• Bristol Bay: the Portage Creek sonar indexed 36,339 Nushagak kings against a 55,000 to 120,000 goal, and ADF&G managed the Nushagak more conservatively than its king stock of concern plan required (Bristol Bay).
• Yukon River: ADF&G expected no king harvest in any fishery; its Canadian-origin forecast of 22,000 to 33,000 was below the 71,000-fish border objective, and by July 13 the Eagle sonar at the border had counted 1,633 kings, against 4,811 by that date on average (Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim).
• Norton Sound: kings missed every escapement goal (North River, 399 against 1,200 to 2,600), and the area's one buyer bought none.

Scarcity shows in the price. The 2025 table above prices a king at about $68 at the dock statewide and a Prince William Sound king at about $240; a 2025 sockeye was worth about $6.

Where chinook salmon are caught

Chinook, the fleet's kings, are the smallest-volume salmon species Alaska harvests commercially, and the Southeast Alaska troll fishery, which also targets coho, takes by far the largest share. The rest is spread thinly across the Alaska Peninsula, Prince William Sound, Bristol Bay, Kodiak and Chignik, which the by-area table ranks for this season. In western Alaska the AYK chum and Chinook fisheries answer to a different rule than the rest of the state: commercial openings there wait on meeting subsistence escapement goals first, so a slow AYK Chinook run can mean no commercial opener at all that year, not just a smaller one. Prince William Sound runs a short early Chinook and Copper River sockeye opener before its main pink and chum season starts.

Season and market

Chinook return earliest of the five species, with most Alaska runs peaking in May and June, well ahead of the sockeye, pink and chum fisheries that carry the summer. That early timing and the smallest run sizes of any Alaska salmon species combine to make Chinook the highest-priced per pound of the five almost every season, though the exact gap moves with each year's harvest and market. Most of the commercial catch is sold fresh or frozen rather than canned, marketed as a premium product on the strength of its size, high oil content and flavor. Because Chinook volume is a fraction of pink or sockeye, a small change in the Chinook forecast or harvest barely moves the statewide all-species total but can matter a great deal to the boats and communities that depend on it.