Are you ready for salmon?

Gillnetters are expected to get their first crack at those famed Copper River king and sockeye salmon on May 16.

That's the word from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, which yesterday issued this season outlook for the Prince William Sound region.

Last year's Copper River fishery started a bit earlier, on May 13.

The Copper River traditionally stars as the year's first major gillnet salmon fishery, and gastronomes nationwide pay handsomely for the catch.

The Sound's other fleet, the purse seiners, will start May 23 with a fishery targeting chum salmon returning to the Armin F. Koernig hatchery, the outlook says.

Limited entry stands for halibut charter boats

A Washington, D.C., judge has denied a motion for a preliminary injunction against new federal regulations limiting the number of halibut charter boats in Southeast and Southcentral Alaska (Areas 2C and 3A).

The judge's order was entered today.

Here's the background on this.

Princely prawns

The Prince William Sound commercial shrimp pot fishery wrapped up its first opener of the season on April 19, and the preliminary results are in: 33 boats caught about 10,000 pounds over five days.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game reopened the fishery at 8 a.m. yesterday, and boats can keep catching until 8 p.m. April 29. The quota for the season is 52,760 pounds.

This is the second consecutive year for a commercial shrimp pot harvest in the Prince William Sound. The fishery previously was closed for 18 years due to weak shrimp stocks.

In 2010 the fleet took 45,349 pounds of shrimp out of a quota of 55,000 pounds.

Shrimpers haul up predominantly spot shrimp, also known as spot prawns, in their pots.

These are big, luscious shrimp, the kind Forrest Gump and Bubba Blue could talk about all day long.

Spot shrimp are the largest variety of shrimp in the North Pacific. They take their name from the white, paired spots located just behind the head and just in front of the tail.