A federal appeals panel issued a last-second ruling Wednesday that will allow this summer’s Southeast Alaska troll Chinook salmon fishery to open as scheduled July 1 — reversing a lower court ruling that would have kept the $85 million industry off the water.

“It’s a major victory,” Alaska Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang said in a brief phone interview. “We can go fishing.”

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel, in a five-page ruling, said that the entities defending the fishery — the Alaska Trollers Association, the state of Alaska and the National Marine Fi...