It’s that time of year.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) has released a summary of the 2025 commercial fishing season in Upper Cook Inlet.
The total harvest was 41% greater than the recent 20 year average. While king, pink, chum, and silver salmon numbers were down, red salmon numbers were up significantly.
ADFG does not summarize the sport fishing season, but they do release sonar and weir counts for freshwater rivers and creeks.
Here’s a review the Kenai River sonar numbers.
King Salmon
The early run king salmon forecast was 1,531 fish. The actual return was 2,541. This fell short of the goal of 3,900 to 6,000 fish. If there’s good news about the early run of king salmon it’s that the trend is up. These are the best numbers since 2021.
It was better news for the late king run. The preseason forecast was 8,742 fish. The final number was 15,015 fish, which exceeded the recovery and optimum escapement goal. It’s the first time the goal has been reached since 2018.
I unfortunately can not report on king fishermen success because the entire season was closed.
Red Salmon
The early red salmon run (Russian River), surprisingly, has no forecast. It does however, have an escapement goal. The optimum run number is between 22,000 and 42,000 fish. The final count was 37,153 fish. Overall, the fishing was “just okay”.
The late red salmon run was spectacular. The forecast for the entire Upper Cook Inlet was 6.9 million fish. That number was exceeded half way through the season. When it was all said and done the final tally was 12.1 million fish.
Of the 12.1 million reds in Upper Cook Inlet, the Kenai River had 4.25 million fish cross the sonar. It was a record run that exceeded the top end of the goal by 2.5 million fish.
I can’t think of enough superlatives to describe how great the red salmon fishing was this year. As a rough estimate, in a 3-4 week period I cleaned around 850 fish. Considering we practiced quite a bit of catch and release fishing as well, I easily netted over 1,000 fish. Numbers my back surgeon would not be happy to hear of….
Silver Salmon
ADFG does not have a goal, nor do they count silver salmon in the Kenai River.
The consensus from friends and other river guides is that 2025 was an average run of silvers. Considering how weak the run was the previous year, I was happy for an average run.
Outlook For 2026
I think 2026 is going to be a great year, but I’m clearly biased. In a couple of months, the fish scientists at ADFG will be releasing their salmon run forecast. As soon as they do, I’ll be reporting about it here.
Whiteboards Part 2