Numbers are cause for concern

As you may or may not know, Dave Rutz, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Sportfish Division area biologist for our Northern Cook Inlet, area retired from state service last October and took a job with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage. Sam Ivey, Dave’s assistant management biologist, took over as acting area management biologist until recruiting, interviewing and hiring of Dave’s replacement could be accomplished.

Since this past Alaska Board of Fisheries cycle included the Upper Cook Inlet meeting, ADF&G essentially put hiring Dave’s replacement on hold until after the meeting so staff could concentrate on preparing reports and presentations for the meeting and participating at the meeting as well. Sam did an excellent job of representing the department and our Northern Cook Inlet area in front of the BOF during the two weeks of the meeting in late February and early March.

In early May, I was in the Palmer office talking with Sam and asked how the hiring for Dave’s old job was coming. Sam told me that he had just received word that morning that he had been hired into the permanent position to replace Dave and was no longer in an acting status. To me, that made the most sense since Sam had been the assistant for something like eight years and knew the area better than anyone except perhaps Dave himself. I had been hoping Sam would get the job.

Shortly thereafter, I was looking at job announcements for fisheries biologists with Fish and Game on the state jobs website and noticed a posting for a non-permanent position for a fisheries biologist to do pike research and eradication work in the Northern District. Coincidentally, Dave Rutz had done the all original pike research in the Valley back in the late 1980s and into the ’90s. I wondered for a second if that could lure Dave back from his federal job, but then dismissed the thought.

As it turned out, Dave did submit an application for the position and was hired. He’s been back doing field work and supervising his crew for a few weeks now. Who better than the guy who did the original work to do the follow-up research necessary to get a handle on reducing the pike predation of our Valley salmon stocks? I’m happy Dave’s back.

Congratulations to both Sam Ivey and Dave Rutz in their new positions. I’m also encouraged that ADF&G seems to be showing some common sense by placing the people with the best knowledge and experience into critical positions in our area, rather than bringing somebody who is unfamiliar with our situation on board and losing a year or more until they can come up to speed with our area’s situations.

OK, so what’s happening in the sportfishing world besides recent hirings? I was back in the Palmer office talking with Sam earlier this week and asked how the king runs were doing. The Deshka is the benchmark for the Northern District and Sam mentioned that it’s still too early for a firm prediction of how this year’s run is shaping up and whether any management restrictions will need to be implemented.

Ivey stated that during this coming week, the Deshka king run will reach its historical 25 percent of the run has returned. Depending on the numbers of fish counted through the weir, the managers should have a much better handle, at that point, on the forecast strength of the run for the rest of the season and can begin to make any management adjustments considered necessary by that forecast.

The preseason forecast was 21,000 total kings into the Deshka. That number includes all commercial, subsistence and sport-caught harvests, plus the actual escapement for spawning. In other words, all the fish.

That projection is a little below last year’s preseason forecast. Ivey said the department had projected a below-average run for 2011. The average harvest of Deshka kings runs around 6,500 fish. Both commercial and subsistence catches in the Northern District take Deshka fish, but nobody knows exactly how many because the genetics sampling program has not been expanded to include king salmon in our area yet.

The overall commercial harvest in the Northern District runs around 3,500 to 4,000 kings. The reported subsistence catch is something like 1,000 fish, but is suspected to actually be higher. The escapement goal for Deshka River kings ranges from a low of 13,000 to a high, I think, of 28,000 king salmon. If the average sports catch of 6,500 is taken and let’s say a third of the commercial and subsistence catches are Deshka fish, then another 1,500 (in round numbers) kings are gone.

From the preseason forecast of 21,000 kings, if 6,500 are sport caught and another 1,500 are taken in commercial and subsistence fisheries, we will just make the minimum escapement of 13,000 spawners considered necessary to maintain a healthy stock of fish. The accuracy of the preseason forecast historically has ranged from within 5 percent of the actual number to as far off as 100 percent above or below what came back.

This next week’s numbers will decide if additional sportfishing restrictions will need to be imposed. I usually look at the glass as half-full, but in this case, I’d say to expect further restrictions.

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