The 92nd Annual Meeting of the International Pacific Halibut Commission was held January 25-29, 2016, in Juneau, AK. While there were some minor changes from 2015 to 2016 the impacts should be relatively small to most of our guests. Here are the 2016 rules for 2016:
- Two halibut daily bag limit
- One of the two retained halibut must be less than 28″ in length
- Four-fish annual limit (applies only to halibut caught on charter vessels)
- Charter-caught halibut must be recorded on the back of angler’s license or harvest card
- No charter fishing for halibut on Wednesdays
- One charter halibut fishing trip per vessel and charter halibut permit per day
What changed and how that affects you:
- The “small” fish went from 29″ to 28″ maximum size. According to IPHC data this amounts a drop of 1.1 pounds to the live weight of the fish. This translates to about 1/2 a pound of fillet less per day.
- In 2016 the charter fleets were closed on Thursdays now they are closed on Wednesdays.
- We went from a 5 fish annual limit to a 4 fish annual limit. This effects groups fishing 2 or more days. We will work with individual groups to explain the options when halibut fishing more than two days, but basically you can fish up to four days if you don’t keep you second”small fish or we can take you fishing for other species depending on the season.
- No longer are charters allowed to run doubles. It will be interesting to see if this cut in supply will affect pricing for the 2016 season. At this point, we at Discover Alaskan Adventures have no plans to raise our pricing based on this change but we do expect boats to fill up quicker than usual based on the commission limiting each boat and permit to one trip, so call (907) 567-3220 to reserve your seat today!
We hope this information helps everyone to understand the changes for 2016.
