Short Season Means High Prices For King Salmon

With a very limited salmon season facing not just recreational anglers but commercial fishers, the impact will likely come at your local supermarket. Here’s the San Francisco Chronicle with more on the opening week of ocean Chinook fishing.

The local commercial salmon season opened Tuesday, but only in the region south of Half Moon Bay for a weeklong period. It will reopen for a 12-day period in late June. The region north of Pigeon Point/Half Moon Bay to Horse Mountain/Shelter Cove (Humboldt County) will be open for salmon fishing from late July through September and part of October. The Klamath Management Zone, a coastal area in Northern California and Southern Oregon near the Klamath River, will be open for salmon fishing for most of May through August, with daily and monthly quotas.

Two fishermen from the San Francisco Community Fishing Association planned to bring up 1,000 pounds of salmon Friday after landing them in Monterey, said member Larry Collins.

“The conditions are really good down there. The bay’s full of life,” said Collins, who noted there are a lot of squid and anchovies for the salmon to feed on and that the fish are coming in larger than normal for this early in the season.

Monterey Fish Market in Berkeley has California king salmon for $29.99 per pound, while Bi-Rite in San Francisco is selling it for $34.99 per pound at its two locations. Tokyo Fish Market in Berkeley planned to start selling it Friday.

Usually open from at least May to September, this year’s California commercial salmon season is very limited because the current batch of adult salmon were born during the drought in 2015, which made their Sacramento River spawning grounds too warm and killed off many juvenile salmon.