July 24, 2014 — Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials said that as July 18, there were an estimated 480 drift gillnet and 26 set gillnet permits participating in the Copper River and Prince William Sound gillnet fisheries.
Statewide commercial harvests of wild salmon rose above 71 million fish on July 22, including nearly 29 million salmon in Bristol Bay, but Copper River sockeye prices were holding their own, despite the increasing competition.
The best deals were at box stores like Costco Wholesale, in Anchorage, where fillets of neatly packaged Copper River reds were $9.95 a pound.
At Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, whole fresh Copper River sockeyes were $77.94 per fish, and fresh Copper River sockeye fillets were $19.99 a pound.
FishEx in Anchorage had frozen Copper River king filets for $33.71 a pound, down from $44.95 a pound.
Also online, Copper River Seafoods had two pound packages of four 8-ounce portions of Copper River sockeye salmon for $59.95.
The preliminary harvest from the Copper River stood at over 2 million fish, including 1,998,000 sockeye, 42,000 chum, 10,000 kings, 2,000 pink and fewer than 1,000 silver salmon.
For Prince William Sound overall, the harvest reached 26.6 million salmon, including more than 22 million humpies, 3.2 million red, more than 1 million chum, 10,000 king and 8,000 silver salmon.
Many online and other retail outlets were offering other wild Alaska fresh salmon, both whole and fillets, at more competitive prices.
Read the full story at The Cordova Times