With the Gulf of Alaska pollock C season opening Thursday, some salmon fishermen are concerned it could bring an early end to a salmon season trying to make a rebound.

“We’ve got massive amounts of product around,” said Dan Gilbert, skipper of the Laura Lee, a seiner currently fishing salmon.

However, it “looks like we’re going to get shut down because of the draggers,” Gilbert said.

The seiner captain said Kodiak processors won’t be able to handle processing both pollock and salmon, especially with the sizable loads of fish the trawling vessels, which fish for pollock, are capable of bringing in.

“It’s too much volume,” Gilbert said.

Gilbert said he and other salmon fishermen are experiencing an upswing in prices for their product and are in the midst of a healthy season. To stop now, he said, would not just hurt his business, but the whole local economy.

Gilbert said Thursday’s pollock opener should be postponed, at least until salmon season dies down.

When the pollock comes in, “I will stop buying pinks and do reds and silvers only,” said Mitch Kilborn, general manager of Western Alaska Fisheries.

Jay Stinson of the Alaska Draggers Association said he will chair a meeting on the topic this afternoon.

Draggers will discuss issues of price, management issues and the duration of the pollock season as well as when as a group they want to start harvesting the fish.

“It’s a little bit too early to say how it’s going to turn out,” Stinson said. Since he is not personally participating in the fisheries this year, Stinson said he has no preference as to when the harvest begins.

“I’m going to be running the meeting and we’ll see what the pleasure of the membership is,” he said.

Regardless, the season will open as scheduled Thursday, Tom Pearson at the National Marine Fisheries Service said. This year’s season is extended 15 days and “can remain open until Oct. 1 or until the quotas are met.”

It’s up to trawlers, he said, to decide whether to start fishing pollock at the start of the season or wait until the Pacific cod quotas are met. The Pacific cod season runs from Sept. 1 until Nov. 1.

Local pollock fisherman Ian Bruce said his colleagues in the fishery will probably be willing to hold off on fishing the pollock C season for now.

“It’s not a major season for us,” he said, adding fisherman will want to wait for better prices anyway.

Bruce said there’s really no need for the fleet to begin fishing when the season begins Thursday.

“There’s a quota that we can take whenever,” he said.