The arrival of chinook salmon at the Whitehorse Fish Ladder has been brisk so far, and ladder manager Tony Nguyen expects the numbers to stay healthy.

“It’s been crazy good,” Nguyen said Tuesday, though emphasizing this year’s run of the king salmon is about two weeks early.

He said the count as of Tuesday morning was 606, compared to 112 salmon at the same time last year.

Of the total, 463 or 76 per cent were male and 133 were female, representing a ratio far from normal or desired.

Alaskan scientists have said the sampling from the run of chinook near the mouth showed an overall return of 30 per cent female and 70 per cent male.

“We prefer a run of about 40 per cent female and 60 per cent male to have a really productive run,” Nguyen said, adding it’s still early.

“We are expecting about 2,000 this year.”

Records indicate the return has exceeded 2,000 in just five other years, he said.

Nguyen said of the 606 as of Tuesday, 438 were chinook reared at the Whitehorse Fish Hatchery and 158 were of wild stock.

The total count last year was 1,139 – a 50-50 split between male and female – with 764 reared at the hatchery and 375 wild.

With mounting concern over the declining state of the Yukon River chinook, all fishing for chinook was closed this year in both Alaska and the Yukon, including the state’s subsistence fishery and the Yukon aboriginal fishery, for the first time ever.

As of midnight last night, 64,522 salmon passed by the sonar at Eagle, Alaska, located just below the Yukon-Alaska border.

Just over 30,000 crossed the border last year, well short of the minimum goal of 42,500 to meet spawning objectives.