My thoughts about meeting concerning management of salmon stocks

I’ve had some time to think about the recent meeting with Fish and Game concerning how the Northern District salmon stocks are managed. There have been other articles written about the meeting and how Valley residents were critical of the management strategies used by the department.

I agree, folks were quite critical of how this year’s Coho runs to the Valley were managed, and I was one of the voices in that criticism.

As things turned out, we did have a strong run of Coho finally returning to Valley systems. The runs were strong enough to allow increased fishing time and larger bag limits. This was a good thing and something Valley anglers haven’t seen much of over the past decade or so.

My criticism of how the department managed the Coho returns centered on three things primarily. First, the two district-wide commercial drift openers where 89,000 Coho were harvested, followed by the next-day restriction on the use of bait by inriver users on the Little Susitna River begs the question of whether the Commercial Division managers were even talking to the Sport Fish Division managers.

If that discussion occurred, then who wasn’t listening to who? And why doesn’t Sport Fish have the authority to override or at least modify Commercial Division decisions if a real biological concern exists in the freshwater systems?

Second, by allowing the back-to-back district-wide drift openers, the front half of the Valley Coho run was effectively removed before the fish even had a chance of returning to freshwater. Guides had to cancel trips for lack of fish, motels lost business, and all the other trickle-down economic effects such a management decision had on Valley economics. One person seriously took the commissioner and his staff to task because his $1.5 million-dollar business catering to tourists and other anglers was financially threatened for lack of business due to the failure of returning fish.

By the time the second half of the Coho run did return to the Valley, school was already in session, folks were gearing up for hunting season, and the bulk of the tourists who had planned on fishing were gone. In short, for a lot of folks, the Coho season was effectively over. Inriver fishing pressure on the Coho was significantly less than had fish been available under “normal” run-timing circumstances.

Another concern is what effect removing a major portion of the early Coho run might have on the long-term genetic structure of Valley returns. I’ve seen where significant run timing shifts have occurred on a pink salmon population because of the way we collected fish for egg takes at a hatchery where I worked. Over the course of nine years, we saw the return timing shift to four-to-five days later because we collected all the early returning fish.

My third criticism centered on the fact that, while the department was basically legally following the management plan, they were not following the spirit of the regulation. The plan calls for the department to “minimize” the commercial harvest of Coho salmon and to provide for “reasonable opportunity” for inriver users to harvest fish through the “entire run.” Neither of these provisions were followed in the spirit they were intended when the plan was written.

The combination of the Sport Fish Division emergency order restricting bait on the Little Susitna and the advance of time into August triggering regulation restrictions on the drift fleet are probably the only things which kept the Commercial Division managers from allowing even more widespread harvest of Coho stocks. Up to 90 to 95% of the Coho harvested in the two district-wide commercial openers were northern bound fish by Fish and Game’s own admission.

I never felt my concerns were adequately answered by the department during this meeting.

I have known one particular drift fisherman for close to forty years. He called me twice regarding this meeting, once before and once after. The before call centered on how our agenda was all screwed up in the allowing of public comment. The after call was “gloating” about how I must have egg on my face over the fact that we did get fish, so what’s the problem?

Both calls demonstrated to me that this guy has no understanding or comprehension of how fishing impacts the lives of folks in the Northern District. He got his fish so who cares about the negative economic impact on hundreds of businesses in this area for lack of fish.

To those guys, it’s all about the money!

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. This column is the opinion of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman or its parent company, Wick Communications. You can leave Delo a message by emailing sports@frontiersman.com.