The Fraser River salmon run opened for a three-hour fishing frenzy on Monday afternoon.
Monday was the first commercial sockeye salmon fishery of the year on the Fraser, but it won’t be the last.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is predicting anywhere from 7 million to a would-be record 72 million sockeye will return to the Fraser this year to spawn. While it’s too early to tell what the final number will be, fishermen were happy when the fishery opened at 3 p.m.
Sean Dukic told CTV News this weekend that he hoped to catch as many as 1,000 fish before the close of fishing for the day at 6 p.m.
"It's going to be crazy,” he said. “Everybody's most likely going to catch a lot of fish. They'll come in here and park their boats just like this and it'll be a frenzy," he said.
The last three years have seen very short openings like the one Monday. However, this year it’s expected that it could open for several weeks once the rest of this year’s sockeye run makes its way down the coast.
Frank Keitsch, a hook-and-line fisherman for Organic Ocean, said the variation in salmon runs each year is part of the job.
“As a fisherman we go through the good times and the bad,” he said. “This is definitely going to be a good time. This is what we hang in for.”
With increased runs comes lower prices at the market. Down at the docks in Steveston, a whole fish runs around $7 per pound or about $30 a fish, but that is expected to drop even further as the opening happens and more salmon come to market.
“They'll go down significantly,” said Scott Moorehead of Longliner Seafood. “It makes a big difference. The fish that are coming in now are being trucked down from Johnstone Strait mostly and from up north and there's no real abundance of it.”
With files from CTV’s Alex Turner
