Price of Salmon
I read an article in our local paper about the high price of Copper River salmon because the high winds and waves produced a very poor first days catch. The few they caught are going to be sold for $30 to $39 per pound for Chinook and $24 to $34 for Sockeye.
Guess I won’t be eating much of that salmon. Lobster anyone?
Larry 
—sagefisher—
Hhhmmm, guess I should have been more profuse in my thanks to a friend who just brought me some Rogue River spring chinook.
Rumor and fear here is the run is going to be poor… Though most are holding out for late. We eat a tremendous amount of salmon and there will probably be plenty for our needs. 
Commercial fishermen friends are elated at the market prospects for the coming season. Anytime halibut and salmon cost more than king crab there is something terribly wrong! There are so many fish so much better than the popular species it is amazing. I worry about the next round of exploitation of those fishes…
For example, about 12 years ago AK started a program and new season for more marginal commercial boats to catch gray cod on automatic jigging machines. At the time gray cod was about the most common fish in the ocean and was a frequent “nuisance” when halibut fishing. Which is strange because the fish is better than halibut. Last season I do not believe we caught a dozen all year long, total.
But then the cod were not enough to justify the capital of buying the jigging machines because too many got into the fishery and swallowed the quota before the marginal boats had enough income. SO they allowed them to jig for rockfish… Slow to reproduce, very slow growing and often ancient rockfish.
Quotas were low so the rockfish fishing was short. BUT… this is the sad part… they allow the jiggers to keep up to 10% of their total catch as “bycatch” which they sell. That would be lingcod and rockfish in those areas where the quota has already been met. So the commercial fishermen targeted the bycatch rockfish on the way back to port… Topping off their totes, as it were. Anyone care to guess what happened to rockfish fishing close to ports?
Now they have made the boats declare before leaving port what area they are fishing and they cannot leave that area, nor fish in another. But the damage done persisted for a couple years… and there are still no gray cod close to ports.
art
