Alaska coho salmon harvest

This page tracks Alaska's statewide commercial coho salmon harvest, known in the fleet as silvers, from ADF&G's Blue Sheet, against the preseason forecast, with the harvest broken out by fishing area. Figures 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. ADF&G's own statewide roll-up still adds Kodiak from the same Blue Sheet row this site holds back, so the statewide figures here understate the season by that shortfall.

Where coho salmon are caught

Coho, the fleet's silvers, range farther than any other Alaska salmon, from Southeast Alaska north to the Chukchi Sea and far up rivers like the Yukon. Southeast's troll fishery, the same fleet that targets Chinook, takes the largest share of the statewide commercial coho catch. Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound and the Kodiak and Alaska Peninsula seine and gillnet fisheries all take coho too, mostly as part of a mixed-species season rather than as a fishery built around coho alone. A mature coho typically runs 8 to 12 pounds, smaller than a big Chinook but in the same range as a large sockeye.

Season and market

Coho are the last of the five species to run, with Alaska's peak typically in August and September, after sockeye and pink have largely finished and as chum fisheries are winding down. That late timing makes coho the fishery that closes out the commercial salmon season in most areas. Ex-vessel prices for coho typically land between the higher prices Chinook and sockeye bring and the lower prices paid for pink and chum, though the exact ranking shifts by area and year. Coho flesh has less fat and a milder flavor than sockeye, with a softer texture, which shapes how it's marketed relative to the richer, higher-priced species that run earlier in the season.