FAIRBANKS — As if things weren’t bad enough for Yukon River salmon fishermen, the fall chum run, which many fishermen were counting on to make up for a lack of kings this year, is either very late or very poor.

“I wouldn’t say we’re in panic mode by any means,” biologist Jeff Estensen, the fall chum manager for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said on Thursday. “We’re getting a little concerned. We need to see some fish pretty soon.”

Through Wednesday, only an estimated 143,024 fall chums had passed a sonar counter at Pilot Station, about 120 miles upstream from the mouth of the Yukon. That’s about half the normal Pilot Station passage for fall chums on that date.

“The fall chum run is not developing the way we expected,” Estensen said in a Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association teleconference on Tuesday. “There’s a lot of uncertainty whether it’s late or we’re looking at a very poor run.”

Before the season, biologists were predicting a run of about 600,000 fall chums. At the rate it’s going now, this year’s run is projected to be only about half of that.

“It does not look good,” said fisheries biologist Fred Bue with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Fairbanks. “We’re at the midpoint (of the fall chum run) and we don’t have very many fish.”

Not only does a poor fall chum run mean fewer fish to put away for subsistence in the form of human and dog food, it also means no commercial fishing, which provides a source of much-needed income for residents along the Yukon River, especially in the lower river.

It takes 400,000 fish just to satisfy escapement and subsistence needs, Estensen said. Biologists need to be confident the run will be at least 500,000 before allowing any commercial fishing.

“We’d have to have some pretty big pulses go by there before we consider having any kind of commercial openings,” Estensen said.

Managers were considering reducing fishing time for subsistence fishermen in the middle and upper Yukon from seven days per week to five to conserve fish, but they decided not to because high water has made catching fish difficult.

“Right now fishing conditions are horrible because of high water,” Estensen said. “We know people are not harvesting a lot of fish.”

The possibility of reduced fishing time didn’t sit well with Tanana fishermen Gerald Nicholia.

“We’re trying to get our winter food and we’re having a hard time doing it with this high water and drift and everything,” he said during Tuesday’s teleconference. “We want the option of fishing seven days a week so we have the option of fishing in the sunshine instead of the rain and high water.”

The first pulse of fall chums is generally used for people food, while fish that show up later in the run are used to feed sled dog teams, Bue said.

“That first pulse of fall chums is a good one,” Adlai Alexander, natural resource director for the Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich’in Tribal Government in Fort Yukon. “They’re almost like king salmon. They’re good eating when they first come through.”

Biologists are still holding out hope the fall chum run is simply late, similar to this year’s king run.

Fall chums typically enter the Yukon River in large pulses or waves, and managers have yet to see a large one this year. The only pulse was a shot of 25,000 fish at Pilot Station during two days late last week.

Based on catches in state test nets at the mouth of the river earlier this week, however, biologists were expecting a pulse of fall chums at the Pilot Station sonar starting yesterday or today. Fish numbers were beginning to increase Thursday afternoon, Estensen said.

“When you see pulses like this you expect to see 100,000 or more fish,” Estensen said. “We’re going to be watching what happens the next couple of days very closely. It’s looking low now, but that could change real quick if we see some big pulses.”

Bue, who retired as the state’s fall chum manager last year and then went to work doing the same thing for the feds, said the start of the 2007 fall chum run was similar to this year “and we ended up with a pretty good run.”

“Fall chum are really pulsy fish,” Bue said. “In a couple days, you can get 150,000 fish cross the sonar, and all of a sudden you’re all caught up.”

One thing that has biologists scratching their heads is a contradictory pattern seems to be developing with the Yukon River fall chum run.

Since the mid-1990s, years with low escapements have produced high returns, and vice-versa.

For example, the parent year of this year’s fall chum crop was a record run in 2005, which was spawned from one of the lowest escapement years on record in 2001.

“That’s why we’re having such a tough time projecting what’s going to happen,” Bue said. “It’s completely contradictory.”

While biologists are optimistic the fall chum run will pick up, the Yukon River’s king salmon run has pretty much played out and the numbers don’t look good.

With only an estimated 33,500 kings past a sonar counter near the Canadian border at Eagle as of Wednesday, there is almost no chance Alaska will meet the minimum escapement goal laid out in an international treaty between Alaska and Canada. The treaty calls for a minimum of 42,500 kings past the Eagle sonar counter.

“We’re going to come up pretty short (at the border),” biologist Steve Hayes, the state’s Yukon king manager, said.

Managers will sit down with fishermen this winter to determine what kind restrictions will be put in place for next year’s king salmon run to ensure the treaty goal is met, Hayes said.

Chances are there will be restrictions similar to last year’s, when fishing was closed the entire length of the river to allow the first pulse of kings to make it through unmolested.

“We’ll work on that with fishers this wintertime,” Hayes said.

Contact staff writer Tim Mowry at 459-7587.