Tag Archives: Kenai River.
Alaska Department of Fish and Game forecasts fair to poor sockeye runs for Cook Inlet, Copper River
State biologists are projecting a mixed bag of returns this spring and summer for Southcentral’s popular sockeye salmon fisheries. Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials on Feb. 7 issued a forecast estimating that just less than 5 million sockeye will return to upper Cook Inlet river systems, allowing for a harvest of nearly 3 million sockeye from the region overall. It’s expected approximately 2.9 million fish from the total run will be headed to the Kenai, with another 941,000 pegged for the nearby Kasilof. >click to read< 19:19
Kenai River sockeye over-escape by 1M, Kotzebue’s 2021 chum season to wrap up, Big PWS Humpy Harvest
Those numbers concern fishermen like Joe Dragseth, a drift-netter in Kenai. He said he worries about the health of the river. And, he said, it’s unfair commercial fishermen have been restricted while so many fish have made it up the river. “Basically, they’re taking the living away from us,” he said. >click to read< – Kotzebue’s 2021 chum salmon season to wrap up with another low catch – “It hasn’t been very good,” said Karen Gillis, manager of the Copper River Seafoods processing plant in Kotzebue. It’s one of two commercial chum salmon buyers in town this year. >click to read< – Prince 
William Sound Humpy harvest is 3rd largest of decade – “The highlight of this season has been the wild stocks returning stronger than anticipated, given the uncertainty about spawning success from the 2019 parent year that was assumed to be negatively impacted by drought conditions,” said Heather Scannell, area management seine biologist in Cordova for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. >click to read< 14:35
Dividing the baby
Alaska’s Kenai River is today a textbook example of the problems of managing mixed-stock fisheries right down to commercial set gillnetters protesting they catch comparatively few of the weak stock. The weak stock is in this case Chinook, or what Alaskans usually just call king salmon, and it just happens to be the same fish that gets caught as trawl bycatch in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea. To date this year, according to National Marine Fisheries Service data, trawlers in the Bering Sea have caught about 11,000 Chinook on their way to a harvest of nearly 1 million metric tons, or about 2.2 billion pounds of pollock. >click to read< 09:04
ADF&G sockeye numbers questioned amid large pink salmon run
Joe Hanes has been on the river since 1969 and has operated a guide service on the river since 1986. He says he’s seen an apparent disconnect between the department’s numbers and the conditions in the river for around 15 years, especially on even-numbered years when Kenai sees a dramatically larger run of pink salmon. “A lot of people think they’re going to come down here and catch sockeye salmon because the department said over 300,000, or well over 200,000 sockeye came in the river the last few days,” Hanes said. “As we can see, they’re all pinks.” ADF&G Division of Commercial Fisheries operates theKenai Riverat river mile 19 of the Kenai River. >click to read< 11:19
Fish processors brace for reductions after Board of Fish decisions
Over the past two weeks the Alaska Board of Fisheries has adopted changes to fishing regulations and management plans in Upper Cook Inlet that aim to put more fish into the Kenai River and streams and the MatSu valley. The plans the board passed to increase both sockeye and king salmon escapement goals in the Kenai River came with restrictions for setnet fishermen, and the plan to allow more fish to the MatSu valley took away an area traditionally fished by the drift gillnet fleet. >click to read<
K-6 gillnetter is a reminder of Kenai’s long fishing history
One of the earliest commercial transactions involving Alaska salmon occurred in 1786. In that year two British ships stopped in Cook Inlet, which was then under Russian-American Company control, to trade Hawaiian yams for fresh salmon. The Russian-American Company never developed a for-profit salmon industry. However, after the United States acquired Alaska in 1867, Americans began operating salteries in Southeast Alaska to preserve the fish for market. In 1878, the first Alaska cannery was built at Klawock on Prince of Wales Island. Within four years, canneries had reached Cook Inlet in Southcentral Alaska. >click to read<08:31
The mysterious case of Alaska’s strange sockeye salmon returns this year
There’s something unusual going on with the sockeye salmon runs returning to Alaska this year. In some places — like Bristol Bay — the runs are strong. In others, like the Copper River or the Kenai River they’re unexpectedly weak. In some places, there are sockeye that are unusually small. In others, sockeye of a certain age appear to be missing entirely. It’s a mystery. In Southeast Alaska, one of the first Fish and Game staffers to notice an unusual trend was Iris Frank, a regional data coordinator and fisheries technician. Frank’s lab is on the first floor of Fish and Game’s Douglas Island office that looks like it hasn’t changed much in the 32 years since she got there. >click to read<18:06
Snug Harbor’s fishing tender has a long history in crabbing
Commercial fishermen delivering to Snug Harbor Seafoods are attended by a tender vessel with a long history and more equipment than it needs for the job. The Bering Sea, owned by Snug Harbor Seafoods, is a 114-foot retired crabbing boat of iron/steel alloy built in 1973 and originally homeported in Washington state. With wooden decks and the company’s logo emblazoned on its side, it dominates the end of the dock in the Kenai River as workers stocked it with groceries and worked to get it ready for the upcoming season last Friday. >click to read<13:49
Commercial fisheries in Upper Cook Inlet open again as sockeye run continues
Commercial fishing resumed in Upper Cook Inlet this weekend. The Department of Fish and Game made the announcement Friday after fishing had been closed for the prior week. Commercial fisheries manager Pat Shields says the numbers of sockeye entering the Kenai river have been ticking up all week. “We’ve been continuing to closely monitor sockeye salmon passage into the Kenai river. The last few days have seen increased passage. It came down a bit Thursday, but 72,000 on Wednesday. Friday’s count in the Kenai through 7 a.m. is the highest morning count we’ve had this year. So we expect simliar passage (as) the last few days. We now can project that we’re going to end up in the goal range for Kenai river, which is 900,000 to 1.1 million. click here to read the story 22:19
State of the kings
For the first time in years, king salmon are showing signs of making a stronger return to the vast wilderness surrounding Alaska’s urban heartland. While Panhandle runs continue to struggle, kings to the north appear to be coming back in reasonable numbers. No records are being broken, but there are enough fish the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has liberalized fishing in two of the state’s most popular roadside king salmon drainages – the Kenai River south of Anchorage and tributaries to the Copper River east of the state’s largest city. A near disaster had been forecast on the latter river, a big, muddy, glacial stream draining 26,500 square miles of Alaska near the Canadian border. A return of only 29,000 fish was expected, and with the spawning goal set at 24,000, the state imposed a host of restrictions on the fishery before it even began. Sport fishing was closed. Subsistence fishermen were restricted to a seasonal limit of only two Chinook, the more common Lower 48 name for kings. And commercial fishermen faced major reductions in fishing time and closures of areas that have in the past produced the biggest king catches. click here to read the story 09:37
Kenai River late run king salmon returns triggers restrictions in commercial setnet fishery
On the opening day of fishing for Kenai River late run king salmon Wednesday, Alaska Department of Fish and Game managers announced restrictions for the commercial setnet fishery that operates on the east side of Cook Inlet. For the second consecutive fishing season, restrictions in sport fishing for Kenai River king salmon have triggered automatic restrictions in the number of hours setnetters can fish. Read the rest here 07:32
Despite promising numbers, king salmon managers still uncertain about run strength
A strong, early pulse of king salmon on southern and central Kenai Peninsula streams has runs off to a good start. But, managers say it is still too early to tell if the Cook Inlet’s ailing king salmon runs will rally from the last few years of poor returns. Thirteen days after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game began counting early run king salmon on the Kenai River, there are hundreds more fish estimated to have passed the sonar by the end of May than the last two years combined. On the Anchor River, there were more kings counted in the river by May 30 than any year since 2007. Read the rest here 09:30
Kings in cycle: Salmon follow boom and bust pattern
The king, or chinook, salmon are the largest of the salmon species and since the world record for a sport-caught king — a 97 pound and 4 ounce fish — was landed in May 1985 by the late Les Anderson, the king fishery on the Kenai River has exploded in both popularity and controversy. More@alaskajournal 23:06
Kenai kings barely meet goal; record set for salmon catch
The
seem to have met their escapement goal after all, but it was still the lowest return on record. more@alaskajournal of commerce 13:25
Cook Inlet salmon management plan implications discussed
“I was really bothered by the last two years when people in the community suffered — both the sport fish and the commercial end — then after the fact the department came out with memorandums … upping the final escapement numbers which would have allowed enough harvest for people to have been able to participate fully.” Read more
“It became very apparent that we were in a fight for our industry at that point,”
Every-one together
Every family takes proactive role during summer king salmon disaster
But, instead of setting his nets in the water to catch a portion of the season’s estimated 6.2 million sockeye run, Travis — like many other East Side setnetters in the Cook Inlet — remained beached, his nets drying in the sun.
“We didn’t do anything else,” Travis said. “You get up and even though you aren’t fishing, you wake up at five in the morning, drive to the beach site, have coffee, watch all the fish jump, get pissed off, get on the phone and start calling people.”
