Increasing the Eklutna Tailrace coho returns?

When I talked with Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) fisheries biologist Samantha Oslund on Tuesday, she mentioned that the Department will be holding their coho salmon smolts at the Eklutna Tailrace hatchery raceway longer this year in an effort to better imprint them to that particular release site. These small coho salmon are hatched out and raised at ADF&G’s William Jack Hernandez hatchery beside Ship Creek in Anchorage, then transported and released at Eklutna Tailrace, and other remote sites, with additional hatchery coho salmon smolts released into Ship Creek. Holding stocked fish longer for imprinting at remote sites before releasing them can improve the number of fish returning to the remote release site. I am happy to see the Department try this technique at the tailrace for coho salmon. ADF&G has been holding Chinook salmon smolts for imprinting at the tailrace for a number of years now. I hope this technique may be fully evaluated to quantify if there is any significant increase in the number of coho salmon returning to the tailrace. Such evaluation may take a number of years to see if there is a consistent trend in the adult coho salmon return, after imprinting them for a longer period of time as smolts. This evaluation is important, because it costs additional money to have an employee monitor and feed the small fish while they are imprinted at remote release site(s). It is therefore important to monitor the coho salmon return and / or the Eklutna Tailrace / Knik River sport fishery harvest and effort to determine if the benefit of imprinting for a specific amount of time is worth the cost.

Stay Off Ice on Core Area Lakes

At the Outdoorsman Show last weekend I asked a fishing guide who operates out of Talkeetna if he knew what the ice was like on lakes in that area. He said the ice was still about 40 inches thick, however there was lots of overflow / melt on top of the ice. HIs advice — time to stay off. When I talked with Samantha Oslund, she had a similar message. When I talked with Mike Hudson with Three Rivers Fly and Tackle in Wasilla he was advising that anglers should stay off the lake Ice in the Palmer - Wasilla core area as well. Mike did mention that there was better ice further north at Lake Louise and that there was still good ice fishing opportunity at the location at this time. Mike also mentioned that people were traveling down to the Kenai River and catching trout below Kenai Lake. He mentioned that there was still ice cover on Skulk Lake and that the launch access was poor down near Bing’s Landing at this time, but that some people were also catching fish in the Kenai River below Skulk Lake.

Outdoorsman Show Bonus

While the Outdoorsman Show occurred last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Mat-Su anglers will be getting a double benefit from the Kid’s Fishing Pond that was operated at the show this year. Talking with ADF&G Director of Sport Fisheries, Israel Payton at the show, he told me that a lot of kids were catching fish and putting them back rather than keeping them from the pond. This of course gave other kids an opportunity to catch the same fish later, which was an added benefit, but Israel also told me that ADF&G intended to stock the remaining trout in a Mat-Su lake like Kepler - Bradley after the show rather than take them back to the hatchery in Anchorage. On Tuesday morning I did a fish stocking search on the ADF&G website, and sure enough, there were recent rainbow trout stockings at Kepler - Bradley Lake(s) that just occurred. Many locals often fish these two connected lakes as one of the first stocked (and open to fishing) locations to have open water each spring. So it appears there should be an extra abundance of catchable-sized rainbow trout available at Kepler - Bradley Lake (s) as soon as the ice melts away from the shore.

Next week I hope to cover with a map(s) showing the Alaska Board of Fisheries Changes made this March to allow additional coho salmon migration into Northern Cook lnlet starting this July,

Good Luck and Fish On!

Andy Couch is a member of the Matanuska - Susitna Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission and the Matanuska Valley Fish and Game Advisory Committee the thoughts and opinions expressed in this column are his own - unless noted otherwise.