An Alaska Department of Fish and Game announcement opens Kasilof Section commercial salmon fishing with set gillnets for tonight.
Those hours will be from 4:00 pm until 12:00 midnight on Wednesday, June 24.
Drifting will also be allowed for those hours on the Kasilof Section.
As of noon today more than 98,000 sockeye salmon are estimated to have passed the Kasilof River sonar site.
That number is the second highest passage estimate through this date in the years from 2006 to 2015.
Aaron Dupuis with the department said current Kasilof set gillnet fisher people are scheduled for Mondays and Thursdays 7:00 am to 7:00 pm until they go into king salmon conservation mode.
Dupuis: “Up until the first of July, if it’s not a Monday or a Thursday between 7:00 am and 7:00 pm then it’s an emergency order and the way that we do that is it’s based off of sockeye salmon passage into the Kasilof river right now and we weigh that against king salmon going into the Kenai River.”
After that set gillnet commercial fisher people will be limited to 36 hours per week if king escapement goals are within 15,000-25,000 fish.
Fishermen in the Upper Subdistrict of the Central District who own and operate two CFEC set gillnet pemits may operate up to 210 fathoms of gear, except that no more than 105 fathoms may exceed 29 meshes in depth.
Additionally, each set gillnet operated under this section with 29 meshes or less in depth must be identified at one end with a blue buoy that is 9.5 inches in diameter or greater.