Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim salmon harvest

The Yukon, Kuskokwim, Norton Sound and Kotzebue subsistence-priority fisheries, where commercial chum and Chinook openings hinge on meeting escapement first. This page tracks Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim's cumulative commercial salmon harvest from ADF&G's Blue Sheet, by species, against the area's preseason forecast. The numbers are common-property and cost-recovery catch in thousands of fish, preliminary and updated through the season; sport, subsistence and personal-use harvests are not included. Percent of forecast is a share of the full-season projection, not a good-or-bad call, and it climbs as each species opens and peaks: early low percentages are the run still building, not a weak year.

Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim covers the largest geography of any area here, from Norton Sound down through the Yukon and Kuskokwim river drainages, and it operates under a different priority than the rest of the state. Alaska law puts subsistence use first when a resource cannot support every use, and in the AYK that is not a theoretical clause: Chinook and chum returns to the Yukon and Kuskokwim have run far below their historical levels for years, and both subsistence and commercial fishing have been restricted or closed outright as a result.

What that means for this page is that a low or absent commercial number here is usually a management decision rather than a market one. Escapement is monitored on the Yukon with sonar projects at Pilot Station in the lower river and at Eagle near the Canadian border, the latter counting fish against an obligation under the Yukon River Salmon Agreement with Canada, and commercial openings wait on those in-season passage estimates. Where commercial fishing does proceed it often targets summer or fall chum rather than Chinook. Yukon River Chinook returns covers how those sonar counts are read.

How the 2026 season ran. ADF&G's April 2026 outlook expected almost no commercial salmon from the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim region: no harvest of Yukon River kings in any fishery, no commercial chum opening on the Yukon expected, and nothing from the Kuskokwim Area because no buyer had registered there. Norton Sound was the only area with a sockeye outlook above zero, a range of 0 to 2 thousand fish, and that is the 1K sockeye forecast in the table above.

That is why the sockeye line reads so far over forecast. A buyer did register in Kuskokwim Bay, and on July 5 ADF&G announced the bay's first commercial periods since 2021, saying sockeye runs in the area had been growing for 20 years and there was a surplus to harvest. District 4 (Quinhagak) and District 5 (Goodnews Bay) opened for 12 hours on July 7, with water near the river mouths closed to protect kings; the last periods ADF&G announced were five 12-hour openings from July 27 to July 31. The Blue Sheet first carried those sockeye in the week ending August 1, the jump in the week table above.

Norton Sound fished chum and coho. ADF&G's October 14 season summary puts its commercial catch at 48,700 salmon worth $320,657, with 72 permits fishing, the fewest since 2007. Its one buyer, Norton Sound Seafood Products, paid $2.20 a pound for sockeye, $1.90 for coho, $0.75 for chum and $0.35 for pink, the same as in 2025, and bought no kings. Kings missed every Norton Sound escapement goal: the North River counted 399 against 1,200 to 2,600, and the Kwiniuk River fell short of its 250-fish goal for the sixth year running. Kotzebue opened July 10 and fished six 8-hour periods a week until August 31, and its chum catch beat the 50,000 to 150,000 fish outlook, but with fewer than three processors buying, ADF&G keeps the Kotzebue harvest confidential.

On the Yukon, the kings came in weak, as forecast. By July 13 the Pilot Station sonar had counted 101,924 kings, against an all-season average of 155,203, and the Eagle sonar at the Canadian border 1,633, against 4,811 by that date, far short of the 71,000-fish border passage objective. Summer chum passed 940,426 at Pilot Station by July 13, inside the 500,000 to 1.2 million goal, and on October 6 ADF&G projected the fall chum run at more than 900,000 against a 311,000 forecast, though only 15% were bound for Canada and the border goals were not expected to be met. Yukon River king salmon returns explains how those counts are read.