Prince William Sound commercial fisheries are continuing to tick up their harvests of pink and coho salmon, bringing the state’s preliminary area catch report to 48.7 million fish.
As of Tuesday, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s preliminary commercial salmon data sheet showed the harvest of Prince William Sound pink salmon was at nearly 43 million humpies – up from 42.6 million a week ago. The coho catch also had improved to 350,000 silvers, up from 249,000 silvers seven days earlier.
Overall harvests of sockeyes, chum and Chinook salmon were unchanged.
Neatly packaged fresh sockeye salmon fillets were still on sale at Costco stores in Anchorage at $11.99 a pound and Fred Meyer supermarkets had fresh coho salmon fillets on sale for $14.99 a pound for store card holders, while the regular price stood at $17.99 a pound.
The online Anchorage seafood shop FishEx lowered the price of its premium portions of Copper River sockeyes to $29.95 a pound, down from its season opener price of $56.95 a pound, but elsewhere in Anchorage there were no Copper River reds in area retail shops.
Where they are available is from Copper River area processors – like 60° North Seafoods at www.senasea.com, and Drifters Fish at driftersfish.com – as well as several online options. Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle had whole coho salmon and coho fillets, but did not indicate where they were harvested. Other options were finding this year’s catch in frozen and canned packaging in seafood shops, gourmet food shops and supermarkets.
ADF&G calculated the statewide commercial preliminary harvest at 186 million salmon, including 114 million pink, 52 million sockeye, 18 million chum, 2.3 million coho, and 170,000 Chinooks.
State fisheries officials said that they plan to release the annual salmon season summary in November, following the release of full season harvest data.
