Finally some good fishing news

There’s some good news on the fisheries front. A couple of news releases from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the reopening of salmon fisheries over in the Upper Copper/Upper Susitna area.

First, the Chitna Subdistrict dipnet fishery reopened July 12 through July 15. According to the announcement, this fishery will be managed on a weekly basis through the rest of the season. Sockeye run strengths have improved enough to allow this current opening, but any future openings will be dependent on continuing return strengths of the Copper River sockeye.

The second announcement states that all sockeye salmon sport fisheries upstream of the south bank of Haley Creek in the Upper Copper River drainage will reopen July 13. The bag limit remains at three sockeye salmon. Fish and Game expects that the lower limit of the Copper River escapement goal will be achieved based on current fish numbers and that the sport fishery can remain open for the remainder of the season.

However, considering the fluctuations and irregularities noted in this year’s sockeye returns, I would suggest that you check with Fish and Game prior to making a trip out to the UC/US area to fish, just to be safe. You can call Mark Somerville, the UC/US Area Management Biologist for any updates at 907-822-3309.

Fish and Game had previously announced that the Kenai personal use dipnet fishery would open on July 10 and run through July 31. This is another fishery where you might want to check with Fish and Game prior to driving down. I haven’t participated in this dipnet fishery in several years, but when I did, it seemed like the better times to go were after July 15. You will want to avoid the commercial fishery open period dates and watch the daily counts posted on the Fish and Game website to decide when to go.

Bag limits for both this and the Chitna dipnet fisheries are 25 fish for the head of household with an additional 10 fish for each member of the household. For example, a husband and wife could harvest 35 fish in either of these Alaska-resident-only dipnet fisheries.

On another topic, I went to the monthly blackpowder handgun shoot at the Matanuska Valley Range this past Tuesday evening. I figured the folks who could tell me if I had won anything at the Alaska Territorial Shoot back in June would be there and I could ask. I had mentioned previously that I had missed about half of the Territorial and the awards ceremony because of our little dog being ill and my obligation to attend a hunter education conference in Anchorage.

I had only shot one full aggregate consisting of four individual matches and one match out of the three which comprised another aggregate. As it turned out, and much to my surprise, I won a medal for each of the five matches plus a medal for the aggregate that I completed. I took silver, or second place, across the board for the sighted smoothbore matches and aggregate and a bronze, or third place, in the one rifled musket match I managed to complete. Not bad for an old guy who doesn’t shoot nearly enough to keep my shooting skills in good shape!

Regarding the Tuesday evening pistol shoot, I brought my Ruger Old Army model revolver to shoot and to get more familiar with handling and shooting it. This is a gun I had no intention of buying at the time I got it.

I was perusing an online gun auction website one day and noticed this revolver listing. The price was quite low for the particular model of gun. I placed a bid just to push the price up a little, figuring that somebody else would trump my bid and the seller would realize a sale closer to the actual value of the gun. You know the rest of this story. Nobody raised the bid, so I was the proud new owner of a gun I really had no intension of buying!

In hindsight, I’m glad I won the auction. Ruger quit making this model several years ago and for a gun in good condition, the value just keeps improving every year. When the time comes for me to sell it, I should easily recoup the original sale price plus a few dollars.

So, how did I do in the Tuesday evening blackpowder shoot? Let’s just say I was second out of two shooters in my category!