Field report estimating Alaska's 2026 commercial salmon harvest from in-season ADF&G blue-sheet data, with an interactive pink-run slider and a comparison to the Kalshi betting market.

● Live data ADF&G blue sheet · as of ~Jul 22, 2026 Kalshi KXAKSALMON-26ALL

How big will Alaska's 2026 salmon haul be?

A running estimate built from the state's own in-season catch report — the “blue sheet” — checked against how past years actually filled in, and compared to what the betting market thinks.

~105M fish
my best single guess · likely range 90–125M
I think 2026 lands below the state's 125M preseason forecast. Sockeye and chum are already coming in light. The whole question now is the pink run, which has barely started — so the honest range is still wide.
Where 105M sits
01

What I actually did

Four steps, plain version. No magic — just the state's numbers, a bit of history, and honest uncertainty.

Step 1

Read the blue sheet

Alaska publishes cumulative commercial catch by species all season. Right now it reads 39M fish landed — mostly sockeye, with pink barely begun.

Step 2

Ask “how far along?”

39M today isn't the final. I needed the % of each species' run typically done by late July — sockeye is nearly finished, pink is not.

Step 3

Check the history

I pulled the same blue sheet from past even years (2020/22/24) out of the web archive to see how each species really fills in by date.

Step 4

Project + stress-test

Scale each species to a full season, add them up, then wiggle the big unknown (pink) to see how much the answer really moves.

02

The haul so far vs. the forecast

Solid bar = caught so far. Faded bar = where I project it finishes. Hatched outline = the state's preseason forecast. Notice pink: almost nothing caught, huge forecast — that's the wildcard.

Caught so far My projected finish ADF&G forecast
The read: Sockeye (~34M caught, ~90% done) is finishing near 40M — under the 49.7M forecast. Chum is soft too. Those two alone knock ~15M off the state's headline number.
03

How 2026 is tracking vs. past years

Total fish landed as the season rolls on. Each grey line is a past even year; the thick coral dot is where 2026 sits today. The big vertical climbs are the pink run in August — the part of the story we haven't seen yet.

Even years only (pink salmon run on a strict 2-year cycle, so odd years aren't comparable). 2022 was a monster (153M); 2024 was weak (100M). 2026's final almost entirely depends on which August it gets.
04

It all comes down to pink — try it yourself

Everything except pink is basically locked in at about 57M fish. So the entire 2026 total is really one number: how many pink salmon show up. Drag the slider.

Projected 2026 total
at 46M pink salmon
Everything else (near-locked)56.7M
Pink (you're setting this)46.0M
2026 total102.7M
Which Kalshi “at least X” bets pay out
Why the range stays wide: a low pink count today can mean the run is genuinely small — or just late. We literally can't tell yet. That ambiguity is the whole reason I won't commit to a tight number until mid-August.
05

My estimate vs. the betting market

Kalshi lets people bet on “will the total be at least X million?” The teal line is what the market's prices imply; the coral line is my model. The market sits well above me — it's still hugging the state's 125M forecast.

Read a point as “chance the final total clears this line.” At 100M: I say ~55%, the market says ~89%. That gap is real — but it's a thin market (only a few hundred contracts traded), so it may just be anchored to the forecast, not smarter than the data.
Bottom line: the direction of my disagreement is well-founded — the water is coming in below forecast. But I wouldn't bet the farm on the exact gap until pink resolves. This tool gets sharp in mid-to-late August, when the big climbs on that pace chart actually happen.
06

How good is the state's forecast, really?

The 125M is ADF&G's preseason guess — and guesses have a track record. Each bar is the actual catch; the ▾ tick marks what they forecast. Gap between them = the miss. Three even years, by species, with 2026's forecast for comparison.

Actual catch (bar length) Preseason forecast (tick) 2026 caught so far
The takeaway: sockeye forecasts are tight — within ~7% every year, so this year's soft sockeye is a real signal, not forecast noise. Pink is the opposite: dead-on in 2020 & 2022, then off by 42% in 2024. And the statewide total came in under forecast in two of the last three even years (−12%, −24%), dead-on the third. That history is exactly why I lean below the 125M.
How ADF&G builds the forecast
Sockeye

Most reliable

Sockeye return over several ages, so “sibling models” use this year's young returners to predict next year's older ones (plus spawner-to-return models), river by river. Bristol Bay dominates. Multiple age classes = forecastable.

Pink

The gamble

Pinks are all the same age (2 years) — no siblings to lean on, so the forecast hangs on juvenile-fish surveys (trawl counts of young pinks) and one year of ocean survival. Great when the ocean behaves, ugly when it doesn't.

Chum & coho

Rough

Often just recent-year averages (the press release literally says “average”), plus hatchery contributions for chum. Smaller totals, so misses matter less.

Chinook

Not in the number

No statewide commercial king forecast — many stocks are of conservation concern and managed individually. The 125M is really the four species above.

07

How much does today's blue sheet actually tell us?

I pulled 15 years of archived blue sheets (9 with a clean end-of-season final) and re-scaled each to % of its own final. Every grey line is one past season's fill-in. Where the lines fan apart, the blue sheet is a weak predictor; where they converge, it's locked. The dashed line is where we stand today.

7 densely-tracked seasons shown; the bold coral line is the average across all 9. Y-axis = share of that year's final total already reported.
Late July — today
~50%of final is in
final = 1.7–3.5× today's total · weak
Mid-August
~75%of final is in
final = 1.1–2.3× · firming up
Mid-September
~90%of final is in
final = ~1.0–1.5× · locked
So, directly answering the question: today's blue sheet correlates only loosely with the final — across 9 years, late July had captured anywhere from 29% to 58% of the season, so a single reading now pins the total only to a roughly 2× band. It gets trustworthy fast: by mid-September the same reading is within ~10%. That's the honest reason I hold a wide range now and expect the tool to sharpen through August.