Looking back at the season

Another personal use fishing season is over. I don’t know how this season’s user numbers and total catches will stack up against previous years (the data should all be tabulated later this winter), but this has been an interesting season.

The Kasilof River personal use fishery apparently went well enough that Fish and Game actually extended the dipnetting areas along the river to encourage more participation as the run developed into another huge return. I haven’t heard much about the Kenai River PU fishery. However, I did hear from a friend who was planning to go down on July 30. He was told by a local area friend not to bother because the few fish in the dipnet area weren’t worth the cost and effort to go down to catch. He cancelled his trip.

The demand for the PU fishery was obviously quite high around Cook Inlet this year since ADF&G and the license vendors actually ran out of permits. The department had to run a special permit printing prior to the end of the season. I suppose my Cook Inlet PU permit was one from that last batch, since I didn’t pick mine up until August 6.

I mentioned last week that, for the first time since the mid-1990’s, ADF&G opened Fish Creek for a one week PU dipnet fishery for sockeye only. I had some other projects in the works and couldn’t get out until the last day, August 7. My wife had expressed some interest in trying salmon dipnetting since she had only ever dipped for hooligan before.

We set the alarm for “early-thirty” Friday morning. I had loaded the nets, hip boots, a small cooler and other gear in the back of the truck the night before. We planned to fish first thing in the morning, starting at the 6 am opening time, for three reasons: first, my wife had to be at work by 9 am; second, the tides looked pretty good for that morning time period; and third, we had heard that if we went early in the morning, we would probably have the whole creek to ourselves.

I was told the best times to dipnet Fish Creek were from a couple of hours before high tide to a couple of hours after. That window of time provides the best water conditions for the fish to easily move into the creek. High tide Friday was around 8:45 am. Also, since this was a weekday, everybody would most likely be working and the competition should be reduced.

We arrived to find dozens of vehicles parked on either side of the bridge – so much for the lack of competition. I noticed as we pulled on hip boots and grabbed nets, that everyone was headed toward the mouth of the creek. We headed upstream, above the bridge.

I had also received a tip that competition would be less upstream and that there were some good holes below the upstream ADF&G markers that should provide some opportunity. We saw no other PU fishers upstream until we had gotten all our fish and were preparing to leave.

We did find a nice hole maybe 100 yards upstream from where we entered the water. After a few attempts at working individually around the hole, my wife and I soon figured out that working together on either side of the hole yielded a lot more fish.

Debby’s first fish was a nice pink, but we were only allowed to keep sockeyes. She quickly released it back into the water. The next few minutes yielded six or eight reds, some of which were still quite bright.

I figured that, since I had never dipnetted Fish Creek before and didn’t know “the ropes,” if we brought home six fish for the morning’s efforts, I’d be satisfied. Here we already had six fish within the first ten minutes of dipping. This could turn out better than I thought.

We continued to work the hole, keeping the bright or very lightly colored sockeyes and letting the more colored fish go. We also tossed back about a half-dozen silvers. As the stringer grew in size, we started “highgrading” and only kept the better looking reds.

I had been working the downstream side and was the one usually catching the fish my wife pushed back from the upstream side of the hole. After scooping a net with five “keeper” sockeyes, we traded places and I pushed fish to Debby.

She was having fun catching fish and I was kept busy clubbing heads, breaking gill arches and adding fish to the stringer. We were allowed 35 fish on our permit, but had decided beforehand that we wouldn’t take that many. As the dipping continued and the stringer got heavier, we decided 20 fish were enough, even though they were on the small side. We ended up with 22 fish in about one-hour’s dipping time.

We clipped tails, filled out the permit and loaded the fish into the cooler in the truck. Debby was on the road to work before 8am and I was headed home to a long morning of cleaning fish.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by e-mailing sports@frontiersman.com.