Hunting & Fishing

Mushers on the Yukon River are struggling to feed their dogs because of weak king and chum salmon runs this year.

Organizations representing Yukon River communities are drafting a letter to Gov. Mike Dunleavy seeking a fishery disaster declaration for this summer’s salmon season.

It’s official. The Yukon River’s fall chum salmon run is shaping up to be the lowest run on record. 

The weak chum salmon run continues on the Yukon River, with managers closing subsistence harvest for salmon to reduce the impact on chum salmon. 

Salmon runs continue to be late and low this year. First the kings, then the chums; now the coho appear to be late coming up the Kuskokwim River. Usually Aug. 7 is the midpoint of the coho run, but this year it was not until the Aug. 8 weekend that numbers at the Bethel test fishery increased, and then only modestly. Managers now predict that the final catch will be below average. 

The king, chum, and sockeye runs are mostly over, and the catch per unit effort for all those species was below the 2008 through 2019 average.

The fishing has gone from bad to worse on the Yukon River. Fall chum numbers are so low that managers have closed subsistence fishing on the lower Yukon. 

So few chum salmon are swimming up the Yukon River this summer that the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has cancelled the 18-hour subsistence fishing period originally scheduled to start Saturday, Aug. 8.

With king salmon having largely reached their spawning grounds, gillnet restrictions on the Kuskokwim are lifting.

Managers will open the Mulchatna caribou hunt on state and federal lands Aug. 1, despite a steep drop in the herd’s population in recent years. 

Subsistence fishing openings in the lower Yukon River are being cut in half to help more fall chum salmon swim into Canada.