Some good news for fans of wild salmon

Local wild king salmon are back in Bay Area markets and restaurants after the commercial season reopened last week from Pigeon Point (near Half Moon Bay) south to the Mexico border.

“The fleet just found a school of beautiful salmon,” San Francisco fisherwoman Sarah Bates said via a text from her boat, the Bounty.

This current window of commercial salmon season is scheduled to last from June 19 to June 30. Bates said the fleet had to wait until about the third day of the opener to start fishing, once the school moved south of the Pigeon Point line with the movement of prevailing currents and feed.

Instead of the usual May to October season, this year’s commercial salmon season will open only in fits and starts in certain parts of the coast through summer and early fall, making it a challenging year for fishermen since conditions don’t always cooperate when it’s open. When the season first opened for a week in May in the same area that is open now, there weren’t a lot of fish to go around.

Things look different this month, though prices are still high in local seafood markets, ranging from $29.99 per pound at Tokyo Fish in Berkeley to as much as $39.99 per pound at Bi-Rite Market in San Francisco for fillets. Reports are coming back that recreational party boats, though, are currently having good luck for those who prefer to catch their own.

Larry Collins of the San Francisco Community Fishing Association said he thinks the price will go down toward the holiday weekend as more boats come in. He also predicts it will be better when the season resumes during the last week of July, and through much of August and September, this time in the region that includes the San Francisco Bay, from Pigeon Point north to Shelter Bay (Humboldt County).

Collins said unlike in May, boats are catching as many as 150 fish per day, and they’re coming in large — about 12 to 18 pounds.

“They’re big, fat Sacramento fish,” Collins said. “It’s like the old days out there.”