When commercial fishermen head out to catch Chinook salmon for their first trip of the season on May 1, they’ll be able to look forward to what’s shaping up to be the longest salmon season in several years.

On Tuesday, the schedule for the 2019 commercial salmon season was announced by the Pacific Fishery Management Council, which determines the dates and quotas of West Coast fishing every year.

California fishermen will have 30 percent more time to fish this year, according to an estimate from John Koeppen, a Santa Cruz commercial fisherman and an adviser for the council.

“We’re seeing a rebound. We’re cautious that we’re on the upswing,” said Koeppen.

The change should mean more Chinook salmon on local tables this summer, likely at lower prices.

The California commercial salmon season usually runs from May 1 to September or October along most of the coast. Last year’s season was limited to monthly windows of several days to several weeks in the spring, and in limited areas. It was then opened for a longer period in the late summer and fall. Restrictions were even more severe in 2017, when the season did not start until August, and the fishery was also limited in 2016. Those two seasons were declared federal fishery disasters by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Tuesday’s announcement comes as good news for California fishermen who have struggled through the restricted salmon seasons and a Dungeness crab season that ended on Monday three months early, due to a lawsuit related to an increase in whale entanglements in their gear.

“It’s the best season we’ve seen in a while, though it’s still not wide-open fishing,” said Noah Oppenheim, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “It’s important there are opportunities spread throughout the coast. They’re going to need to operate in this fishery after having lost crab fishing time in the spring.”

Rather than only being able to fish for a week or so at a time as they did for the past two seasons, commercial fishermen will be able to fish for most of the prime time during June, July and August, and for several weeks in May and September, as well as a few days in October, depending on the location on the coast.

However, the minimum size of salmon they can catch will be 27 inches — 1 inch larger than last year — to make sure that plenty of smaller fish return to the Sacramento River to spawn.

Because the Oregon and Washington commercial salmon seasons will be more restricted than California’s, some out-of-state fishermen will likely come down here, resulting in a greater number of fish caught overall, said Koeppen.

“More fish on the market means there’s going to be a lower price,” he said. “The question is how low will it go.”

Last May, when the season opened to windy conditions that made it hard for fishermen to go out, the prized fish cost around $30 to $35 a pound in stores. Koeppen said that this year’s price will depend on how strongly the season starts. Weather usually improves in June and July, and the salmon start to congregate into bigger schools, allowing fishermen to find them more easily, resulting in lower prices.

“It is a good thing that the price of salmon will be lower this year,” he said. “It will be a quality product that people will be able to enjoy for Fourth of July and Mother’s Day and dad’s day, or whenever they want to go barbecue a piece of salmon.”

Tara Duggan is The San Francisco Chronicle’s assistant food editor. Email: tduggan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @taraduggan