Southeast seiners will have a shot at a large run of hatchery chums for six hours Thursday.
The opening is at Amalga Harbor, about 20 miles northwest of downtown Juneau.
The salmon started out at Douglas Island Pink and Chum, a private, nonprofit hatchery known as DIPAC.
“We’ve been doing quite well in recent times and the returns have been strong. We don’t need as many of the fish that come back to the cost recovery area as we used to. So we’re opening up the Amalga special harvest area to the seine fleet,” said Eric Prestegard, the hatchery’s executive director.
About 45 boats were on site by Wednesday afternoon.
Prestegard said there could be as many as 75. He expects them to catch between 1 million and 2 million pounds during the opening.
Cost-recovery harvests, which pay for hatchery operations, have brought in up to 2.2 million pounds since June 28. Those will resume after the commercial opening.
The harvest area is relatively small and can become crowded.
But Prestegard said there have been no major problems in recent years.
“It seems like everybody is able to figure it out and make it work,” he said. “The last couple years have been real good and they’ve done well and no trouble, no accidents or anything like that.”
He said the Amalga Harbor area will reopen to seiners the next three Thursdays if strong chum runs continue.
The Amalga fishery includes ocean waters from Eagle River to the Shrine of Saint Thérèse.
Some of the action is visible from shore.
