Iliamna Lake levels barely high enough for Bristol Bay boat portage

Many of the boats which fish Bristol Bay spend the winters docked in Homer. Each summer they make the trip across Cook Inlet where they are picked up and trucked across the Pile Bay road to Iliamna Lake. After a long trek across the Lake, they navigate their way down the Kvichak River down to Bristol Bay’s commercial fishing grounds. “From Cook Inlet we pick them up at Williamsport which is just south of Iniskin Bay, and then we move them over the road system and we put them in the Iliamna Lake here at Pile Bay,” said Ray Williams this week. Williams is the owner of Iliamna Transportation Company, and his family has been hauling boats over the road for 80 years. This shortcut saves Homer-based boats about 700 hundred miles, said Williams. But this year the waters between Iliamna Lake and Bristol Bay are unprecedentedly low. click here to read the story 13:55

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