Bristol Bay’s 2026 sockeye salmon season is closing just above the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s preseason forecast of 44 million fish, ending 12 straight years of record and near-record returns.
KDLG’s Jessie Sheldon reported July 27 that the 2026 run landed about 7 million fish above the 1963-2025 average but well below the last decade’s average of 61.0 million, per the agency’s November forecast document. “We’ve just gone through 12 years of pretty much the biggest production in Bristol Bay history,” Naknek-Kvichak district management biologist Travis Elison told KDLG. “And now we’re back towards more of a historical average run size.”
The run also came in about three days early, with the midpoint around July 3 or 4. Bristol Bay sockeye tend to return earlier in years with more May sea ice, University of Alaska Fairbanks associate professor Curry Cunningham told KDLG, and 2025 and 2026 have both broken the on-time pattern of the previous decade.
The district-by-district picture was uneven. Egegik ran about 2 million fish over forecast and Ugashik about 1.5 million over, according to Stacy Vega, ADF&G’s management biologist for both. Across the bay, Elison said the Naknek had its smallest run since 1998, which he attributed to record escapements from 2019 to 2021 leaving too many fish competing for freshwater rearing habitat. The Kvichak came in above expectations and covered most of the combined shortfall, but early-season fleet effort in the district was cut to about one tide a day, with some days closed, to try to hit the Naknek’s minimum escapement goal.
The Nushagak also ran under forecast, at just over 15 million fish against a 19-million forecast, with harvest at about 9 million against nearly 14 million. Tim Sands, ADF&G’s Nushagak area management biologist, said the commercial sockeye opening was delayed until June 27 to allow more upriver escapement of Nushagak king salmon, first listed as a stock of concern in 2022. King counts at the sonar were about 35,000, “still well below the 55,000 minimum that we want,” Sands said. Between the early sockeye return and the delayed opening, Sands said, more fish went upstream as escapement than into the harvest.
Bristol Bay’s rainbow trout feed off the sockeye run: smolts in spring, eggs behind spawners, carcasses through fall. This year that food source varied sharply by river system.
The federal Pebble Mine case over EPA’s Bristol Bay watershed protections is still awaiting a ruling.
