California King Salmon make their way back to Sacramento dinner tables

The Abridged version:

• The commercial fishing season for California King Salmon started on May 1, and local stores have started selling the fish this week.
• This is the first commercial season in California in three years thanks to improved returns of salmon.
• The season will have strict quotas and limits.

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For the first time since 2022, bright orange filets of California King Salmon are back on the shelves in the Sacramento region.

“It’s an amazing feeling,” said Nguyen Pham, owner of Sunh Fish seafood market in Sacramento. “King Salmon is just so highly prized.”

After dwindling returns prompted state regulators to close the ocean season each of the last three years, fish numbers rebounded enough this year to allow a harvest with strict quotas. At the beginning of May, fishing boats up and down the state started pulling in hundreds of fish. Days later, customers are lining up to buy them.

“People rally around it,” Pham said. Alaska has its Copper River Kings and “we have our California Chinook, King Salmon.”

Managing the fishery

Each year, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council forecasts salmon runs and builds a management plan based on predicted returns. This year, good news came when scientists predicted nearly 400,000 returning King Salmon, more than double the amount at the same time last year.

But regulators and industry experts caution that those numbers remain far below historic populations.

Vance Staplin, executive director of Golden State Salmon Association, said that California’s oceans once held between a million and a million and a half King Salmon each year. By 2005, those numbers sustained a $1.4 billion industry that supported 23,000 jobs, he said.

But in the last couple of decades, drought, wildfires and destruction of habitat have steadily diminished the population until it reached crisis levels in 2023.

The crisis remains

Even with the increased numbers this year, California King Salmon are still in trouble.

“We’re working on 25% of what used to be normal,” Staplin said.

The result is a management plan that allows for a commercial season with strict regulations. In total, 83,000 fish can be caught commercially in California waters. Between May and August, there will be multiple 3–7-day windows in which commercial boats can catch 160 salmon at a time.

Staplin said that will hamstring many of the commercial fishing boats, which would typically like to stay out longer and catch a couple hundred fish at a time.

“It makes it really hard for them to make a living,” he said. “It’s on a limited basis.”

High demand

While it’s available, the demand for salmon is high.

Dozens of people lined up for Ferrari Fisheries’ Chinook salmon, caught off Fort Bragg, around noon in West Sacramento on Friday. Owner Anthony Ferrari had sent an email to newsletter subscribers the day before about the catch, pricing it at $21/pound with the entire fish required for purchase.

Multiple generations of families waited over an hour in the sun for the salmon, satiated by the cooler of beverages Ferrari set out as he gutted, gilled and filleted fish.

As the season progresses, Pham said that the availability of California King Salmon at his store will be on a day-to-day basis. The season usually starts strong, then slows down as fish migrate and boats catch fewer.

For now, though, people across the region can have locally caught salmon on their tables for the first time in years. If they’re willing to wait for it.

Daniel Hennessy joins Abridged from the California Local News Fellowship. He’s a reporter covering Yolo County.