Inlet fisheries a sizzler for Fish and Game

PALMER — The weather outside Wednesday night’s meeting of the Matansuka Valley Fish and Game Advisory Committee may have been cold and snowy, but inside the seats were plenty warm.

The hottest was reserved for Jeff Fox, who as the top commercial fisheries biologist in Cook Inlet, is the man responsible for making in-season decisions on how and when the big commercial set and drift gillnets go into the water each summer.

Fox was among large contingent of Alaska Department of Fish and game staff members at the meeting for an informal question-and-answer session with the committee and the public designed to get more information out in advance of next month's Alaska Board of Fisheries meeting. Also in attendance were Dave Rutz, the sportfish area management biologist for the Mat-Su area, Charles Swanton, the director of the department's sport fish division, and Jeff Regnart, the regional supervisor for commercial fishing in Cook Inlet.

Frustrated at frequent sockeye salmon sport fishing closures in the Valley — 2003 was the last season no emergency order was issued to restrict sport sockeye fishing in the Susitna River drainage — members of the public and committee alike used the visit to lash out at state fisheries management policies they say have devastated local salmon runs.

“We should have our fair share,” Palmer’s Howard Riley said, summing up the sentiment voiced time and again during the standing-room-only meeting at the MTA building.

Riley, along with several others who spoke up during the meeting, blamed fisheries managers like Fox for not doing enough to ensure that Mat-Su fish are able to slip past commercial drift fishers lower in Cook Inlet.

“If you were in a normal job, you’d be fired,” Riley told Fox.

Doing his best to remain calm, the Soldotna-based biologist explained that his job is simply to follow a strict set of guidelines laid out in state law by the Alaska Board of Fish, which makes all decisions regarding how fishing time should be parceled out in Cook Inlet.

“I follow the plans,” Fox said.

In fact, Fox said much has been done to ensure that fish bound for Mat-Su streams make it past commercial nets further south in the inlet. The commercial drift fleet has been limited significantly in past seasons, he said, but that still hasn’t helped struggling Susitna drainage systems.

“We do something different every year, and we haven’t found something that works,” Fox said.

He also argued that other fisheries in the Valley are relatively healthy.

“Your fisheries have grown,” Fox said.

“The perception that there’s fewer fish areawide, he said, may have something to do with the fact that the area’s population has grown significantly over the past decade.

“As you put more people into a fishery, you’re each going to catch less fish,” he said.

Members of the public weren’t buying it.

“Many of us feel it is a crisis,” Carl Grauvogel, a retired biologist from Palmer, told Fox.

Grauvogel argued that more can be done to get fish through to the upper portions of Cook Inlet, including further restrictions on drift fishermen, whose nets are set in the open water.

Fox agreed. He said that it the only thing biologists had to worry about was getting fish to Mat-Su streams, his job would be simple.

“If that was the only goal, yeah, there's an easy solution,” he said.

But Fox's job is trickier than that. He must take into account several river systems at once when making fishing decisions, all of which are guided by complex regulations designed to get a fair share of fish to the various user groups in the inlet. If he were to simply restrict fishing more, he could end up with over escapements on Kenai Peninsula streams.

Besides that, Fish and Game doesn't have a good handle on why some Mat-Su streams appear to have low production numbers while others are strong. Factors like pike predation or beaver dams can impact sockeye production as well.

Dave Rutz, area management biologist for the Mat-Su area, said that until more research is done to find out what's going on with production, management will continue to be a delicate balancing act.

“We really don't have a handle on what's happening with the Susitna,” Rutz said.

Fox said there seems to be a perception among some sports fishermen that Fish and Game could easily get more fish into the Valley by simply restricting certain commercial fisheries. But that's just not the case, he said.

“We're doing the best we can,” Fox said. “There isn't a silver bullet out there.”

And, as many in attendance Wednesday pointed out, the ultimate authority for trying to allocate more sockeye salmon to the Valley falls not with department biologists, but with the Board of Fish.

Committee chair Denny Hamann urged anyone with a stake in Mat-Su sports fisheries to turn out in force when the board meets next month in Anchorage to discuss Upper Cook Inlet fisheries rules. That meeting will be the last opportunity until 2011 to make significant changes to how Cook Inlet fisheries are managed.

“The biggest thing you can do is go to the Board of Fish meeting,” Hamann said.

Anyone not able to make that meeting can also share opinions at special hearing of the board scheduled for Jan. 30 at the Best Western Lake Lucille Lodge in Wasilla.

Contact Matt Tunseth at 352-2265 or matt.tunseth-@frontiersman.com.