The fall run of Yukon River chum is looking bad so far, according to the sonar count near the mouth.

"It's the lowest on record," Pete Etherton, acting management biologist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, said this morning of the annual migration.

Etherton said as it stands today, there will not be a commercial chum fishery in the Dawson area, and none is anticipated given the sonar count to date.

There's been no request by DFO so far to have first nations limit their subsistence catch, he said.

Etherton noted management decisions will be reassessed on an ongoing basis as the run makes its way upriver and past the sonar located at Eagle just below the Yukon-Alaska border.

The Pilot Station sonar near the mouth has recorded 208,000 chum salmon as of Tuesday, or just over a third of the 589,000 normally expected on Aug. 25 in an average year, he pointed out.

"There is slight hope that is late, but time is ticking by here," Etherton said. "That hope is diminishing pretty quick here, from what I understand."

The total run in an average year is about 600,000 chum. Yukon and Alaskan officials were initially predicting an above return of 650,000 fish.

There is a requirement for 83,000 chum to reach the Yukon-Alaska border before a full commercial and first nation fishery is allowed in the Yukon, though the run just started crossing the border last week.

"It does not look like there will be one (a commercial fishery) this year."

Last year, commercial boats in Dawson took 4,062 chum, while the first nations fishery harvested 5,504, the bulk of which - 3,436 - were taken on the Porcupine River by the fishery in Old Crow.

Meanwhile, the return of chinook salmon through the Whitehorse Fish Ladder is winding down, though there was a spike as recently as Sunday.

Ladder supervisor Nathan Walker said today 740 salmon have climbed the ladder, including the nine fish in the holding tank this morning.

The daily arrival peaked Aug. 16 with 81 chinook, but then fell off over the next four days to a low of 23 by Saturday. On Sunday, however, the number of chinook climbing the ladder jumped back up to 72, but again

fell down to 23 Monday and 23 yesterday.

"We will go from a really high return one day to a real low the next day but hopefully it will jump again," Walker said.

He pointed out the annual run - a migration of 3,200 kilometres for salmon heading the upper reaches of the Yukon River drainage , is in its final stages, adding that it typically ends in the first week of September.

The chinook run is also about 15 per cent below average, but stronger than officials predicted when they were expecting to keep the commercial fishery closed for the third year in a row, and ask first nations to limit their catches.

As it was, Fisheries and Oceans allowed two commercial openings in the Dawson area, with boats harvesting a total of 364 chinook, according to records.

The aboriginal food fishery, with one community left to report, has netted 3,017 to date, and all indications are there was very low interest shown by sport anglers.

Etherton noted that the portion of females to males arriving at the ladder is abnormally low this year, though it's not clear why.

On a solid average year, the ratio would be 50-50, he said.

Of the 740 chinook to climb the fish ladder, however, just 102 have been female.

Etherton said there is an above average number of four-year-old chinook in this year's run, and four-year-olds are all male.

But even taking account the above average number of young males, there is still a low portion of returning females, he said.

Lawrence Vano, manager of the Whitehorse Fish Hatchery, said he still expects to get the minimum number of 30 females required to ensure he hits his target of harvesting 150,000 eggs, or about 5,000 from each female.

The low number of females may hurt the fledgling program to repopulate Fox Creek with chinook salmon, he said.

Last year, the hatchery was able to provide the Ta'an Kwach'an Council with 30,000-plus eggs for the Fox Creek program, because it collected about 180,000 during the run.

It may not be able to harvest a surplus amount of eggs this year, he said.

The fish hatchery, Vano pointed out, cannot take any more than 30 per cent of the females coming through the ladder. His take of 28 so far accounts for about 27 to 28 per cent to date, so he can still take a few more and perhaps even more depending on how the tail end of the run comes in, he pointed out.

The Whitehorse Fish Ladder was opened 50 years ago this year, to provide chinook with a means or reaching their traditional spawning grounds upriver of the Whitehorse Rapids Dam, which became operational in 1958.