State managers anticipate an "excellent" season for sockeyes.
Alaska's 2025 salmon season will officially get underway on May 22 with a 12-hour opener for sockeye and Chinook salmon at the famous Copper River near Cordova.
In its Friday announcement, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) pegged the harvest forecast for sockeye salmon at 1.92 million fish this season, more than double the ten-year average of 824,000 fish.
For Chinook, or king salmon, the outlook for the total run returning to the Copper River is "weak" at just 36,000 fish, 25 percent below the ten-year average of 48,000 kings.
2024 Copper River recap
At last year's first Copper River opener on May 16, fishery managers predicted a harvest of 14,900 sockeye salmon. To their surprise, the take was 41,857 reds, nearly three times what was expected.
The trend continued throughout the season and produced an unexpectedly high total haul of 1.37 million reds - 54 percent greater than the 10-year average catch of 889,000 fish.
Overall, the 2024 Copper River sockeye salmon run was above forecast for both hatchery and wild stocks, ADF&G said. The sockeye average weight of 5.4 pounds was 0.4 pounds smaller than the 20-year average of 5.8 pounds.
The commercial harvest of 9,200 Chinook salmon was 25 percent below the 10-year average.
Fishermen's prices for the first of the year, fresh salmon from Alaska's Copper River, are always sky-high, and the 2024 season held steady.
Sockeye's fetched $10 per pound and $15 for Chinook salmon, according to Intrafish which had "boots on the ground."
Those are the same starting prices for the first Copper River opener in 2024, compared to $11.50 and $16.50 per pound in 2022.
