People in Alaska are freaking out! Fishermen are asking the USA president for help! I will share some of the local news and counts with links.
So first up is a FB page run by a guy who has been chatting and tracking fish for 20-30+ YEARS!!! Hats off to this guy, he is amazing. Here is his most resent post.
“DON'T GLOSS OVER THE CHARTS AND INFO - AN EDUCATED ALASKAN IS ONE WHO UNDERSTANDS THE "WHY" BEHIND RESTRICTIONS
• GULKANA REDS & KINGS BEYOND DISAPPOINTING SO FAR
• DESHKA & LITTLE SU KINGS ON LIFE SUPPORT
• KASILOF SOCKEYE UNDER-PERFORMING SO FAR
• KENAI EARLY RUN KINGS WILL MISS THEIR MINIMUMS
GULKANA RIVER: We already expected a poor showing of sockeye in the river based on the low numbers in the Copper to date. But at this moment in time the magnitude of the missing fish at the counter is cause to sit up and pay attention. High water on the Copper might have slowed down the reds travel time a bit. And high muddy water in the Gul might have allowed a few sockeye to slip by uncounted. But once the counting tower was operational there were still no reds to be counted. The run on this date is 37% complete with only 84 sockeye counted. The 12 year average run would be at 10,000 counted at this time.
- Gulkana Kings: With all but 3 commercial periods closed to fishing it was expected there would be a bumper "crop" of kings showing up at the Klutina and Gulkana rivers. One look at the Gulkana king run chart and that hope is starting to fade for now. We are still a week from entering the peak of the run so perhaps things will start picking up. But right now the daily numbers should be above the 10 year average run trend line. Dippers at Chitina on the last two days of their season reported lots of kings being rolled out of their dip nets. So there is good reason for optimism at this time. But hurry up fish.
DESHKA & LITTLE SU: The Deshka is going to miss its minimum escapement goal by a lot. To date we are going to fall nearly 5000 kings short of the lower end of the escapement goal. The run is 77% complete and trending back down in counts and heading for the second weakest run in the past 15 years. That is three life cycles.
- LITTLE SU Kings: (Pay close attention to the chart.) The weir had problems with high dirty water preventing counting. But when conditions allowed there were no kings passing through to be counted. The counter remains at 70. And the run hit the 50% run complete mark yestrerday. With a 2,100 minimum escapement goal and the projection at this time only 139 we are at the last passenger pigeon and dodo bird level this season. We need 2,000 fish over the next 3 weeks. Not gonna happen.
KASILOF RIVER: Last night’s opener for the dip net crowd was disappointing as a total of about 60 beach dippers and four boats rang in the new season. Up to 3am my buddy saw perhaps a dozen fish caught before many folks headed back to their tents or home. The ADFG forecast was for a return slightly less than the 20 year average. But the counts to date are falling about 50% below the average run with the last couple days showing improving numbers. The Kasilof is a Wait n See run in the spotlight right now. Commercial beach sites in the Kasilof District fished 12 hours today. We’ll see how the fish tickets turn out for the catch. It didn’t look like there were very many Drift fleet boats even in the water yet. I have added a run projection on this year’s chart because the EO restrictions should reduce harvest numbers and provide more stable calculations of a run size.
KENAI RIVER EARLY KINGS: Going back to the beginning of this run I noted it was looking bad and with just a few “official” days left in the May/June early run counts we are going to come in at 2900 kings and 1000 below minimum goals. WAY BACK at just 10% of the run complete the AOJ chart run projection was for 3000 fish and since then my numbers have never been off by more than 400 from where we are headed.
NOTE: I am now posting my Kenai Visibility Readings on the King chart and on the Kenai Sockeye chart (coming July 2) for those who use that data for their fishing. Comes in handy mainly for king salmon fishing although if the river is blown out its good to know.
KENAI RIVER LATE KINGS: I’ll tell you this right now, with every king return in South-central coming in as a failure I have no doubt we will see more restrictions on the July kings than just the current no bait and keepers allowed in the lower river. CnR is inevitable in my assessment and that means additional EOs on the beach sites to reduce commercial king salmon harvest. The Drift fleet doesn’t catch a lot of kings so their group won’t be affected.
As I noted in the other post, most Alaskans are going to remember this year for a long time before its over. Some good memories and some bad.”
If you take the time to read this and check the charts, it’s shocking and sad!
My family and I will be fishing at a hatchery for pinks, if the counts are good.
Those who are uneducated are fishing.
All I can do is spread the word and hope people hear.
Life in Alaska 😢