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Roughly 4.6 million dog salmon, or chums, returned to DIPAC hatcheries, chalking up the largest return in the history of the corporation and surpassing its previous record of 3 million chums.

Gillnetters in Lynn Canal caught more than 1 million DIPAC chums this season - the highest ever - exceeding the previous record of 670,000 fish set in 2000, said Rick Focht, DIPAC's director of operations.

The season began in late June and peaked last month.

"We've been at capacity for two straight months," said Eric Norman, plant manager of downtown Juneau's Taku Fisheries/Smokeries.

Local and regional processors handled more than 33 million pounds of DIPAC chums, worth more than $10 million, from commercial and cost-recovery fisheries, according to Focht.

In addition to the quantity, the fish are averaging 10 pounds, a bit meatier than last year's average of 8 pounds, Norman said. And fortunately for them, chums are selling for 30 cents per pound in Juneau, up about 5 cents from last year.

"The market was pretty receptive," Norman said.

A bumper crop was predicted after DIPAC saw a healthy return of 3-year-old chums last year.

If a salmon fry can survive its first year at sea, then it has a greater chance of surviving through adulthood, Focht said. Typically, fish between 3 and 6 years old return to their spawning waters.

Based on the plentiful 3- and 4-year-old chum crop, next summer should see a healthy number of 5-year-olds, Focht said.

DIPAC releases about 100 million fry each year, he added.

Just about any spot in the region was a good place to pluck chums out of the water, said Kevin Duckett, executive director of the United Southeast Alaska Gillnetters Association.

"I'd be pressed to pick one place in particular," Duckett said.

In the Taku Inlet and the Stevens Passage, gillnetters enjoyed the third highest summer chum harvest on record, catching more than 350,000 chums. This rush of fish follows a five-year period of relatively low returns, according to Focht.

Seiners in the northern Panhandle harvested more than 200,000 DIPAC chums, helping fill a void created by an extremely poor pink salmon catch, Focht.