One Day for Hatchery Plan Comment / Escapement Goal Management

I am hopeful that even more Mat-Su anglers may take the opportunity to comment on the plan, and am also hopeful that the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) may get one of the highest number of comments ever submitted from Mat-Su residents on the stocking plan. For those reasons I'm mentioning the opportunity to comment for a third consecutive week.

While I believe the stocking plan may indeed provide some benefit to Mat-Su sport salmon fishing opportunity, I'd compare that benefit as similar to a doctor applying a small band-aid where a patient had lost an entire leg — if the much larger issue of managing to better attain Northern Cook Inlet wild Chinook and coho salmon spawning escapement goals is not addressed through regulatory change.

Let's start with finite hatchery space and the high cost of raising Chinook and coho salmon smolts severely limiting the opportunity to rebuild Mat-Su fisheries to the levels achieved primarily through harvesting wild Mat-Su salmon in the early 2000s. At that time we had wild salmon fisheries consistently allowing sport Chinook and coho salmon harvests throughout the Susitna River and Little Su River below the Parks Highway with very few emergency restrictions throughout entire fishing seasons — and sport fisheries managed primarily by conservative sport fishing regulations and even allowed liberalizations after specific abundance levels were achieved.

25 years later, no sport Chinook salmon harvest, or even targeted catch and release Chinook sport fishing has been allowed in the entire Susitna River drainage and Little Su River for the past 3 years. What were once abundant Mat-Su Valley sport coho salmon harvest opportunities have fallen off to a lesser, but substantial amount as evidenced by in-season sport coho salmon harvest restrictions followed by closures for the past three consecutive years at Little Su and Deshka Rivers, two of the area’s largest producing coho salmon streams — and also the primarily two coho salmon indicator stocks for coho salmon abundance in all of Northern Cook Inlet. While high water events during the past 3 years precluded Deshka and Little Su Rivers coho salmon counts during portions of those seasons, there is no credible evidence to support that coho salmon spawning escapement goal levels may have been achieved at either of those two systems, during any of the past 3 years.

Alaska is often touted as having the best wild salmon fisheries management in the world, however, that management is based on achieving established salmon spawning escapement goals. Unfortunately, nearly all Northern Cook Inlet king salmon and Little Su and Deshka Rivers coho salmon escapement goals have been chronically unattained for nearly an entire salmon life cycle. For Chinook, that is normally considered to be 5 years and for coho salmon, 4 years. If / when that occurs during 2026, an Alaska regulation--5AAC 39.222 Policy for the Management of Sustainable Salmon Fisheries—requires ADF&G to identify to the AK Board of Fisheries and the public, stocks that may present a concern related to yield, management, or conservation. Yield in the Northern Cook Inlet sport fisheries, for the previously mentioned stocks had previously fallen precipitously, without most being listed as Stocks of Yield Concern. With one additional season of missed spawning escapement goals (possibly 2026), all these significant and important Northern Cook Inlet salmon stocks could qualify for the next higher level — Stock of Management Concern during the 2026 / 2027 Upper Cook Inlet Board of Fisheries cycle. And that is why I maintain there is a much more important issue that the State of Alaska needs to address than how many anadromous salmon, of which species, should be stocked in which Mat-Su location(s).

To be blunt: If Alaska is managing its ocean conditions / marine harvests of Northern Cook Inlet Chinook and coho on an Unsustainable Basis, how can releasing a similar number of hatchery Chinook or coho salmon, in the same or maybe one additional Mat-Su location, possibly address failing to meet the most important ADF&G established wild Chinook and coho spawning escapement goals for all of Northern Cook Inlet on a chronic basis? For several years now, the reduced size and number of returning Susitna River drainage Chinook salmon is failing to even maintain the number of adult salmon that produced them — even without ANY freshwater sport fisheries targeting them.

Mat-Su wild Chinook fishing and harvest opportunities have been all but extinct for a number of years now. Some of the most important Mat-Su wild coho salmon sport fisheries appear to be following a similar trend. With harvest and bait restrictions followed by closures of Little Su and Deshka Rivers sport coho salmon fisheries for each of the past three years, most of the coho salmon harvested by my charter guests during 2025 came from the only hatchery enhanced coho salmon fishery in the Mat-Su Valley. This is the first time that has occurred in over 25 years — a sad commentary on salmon management failing to meet established wild coho salmon spawning escapement goals, failing to meet purpose language in multiple Upper Cook Inlet salmon management plans, and failing to follow principle of the Policy for Management of Sustainable Salmon Fisheries.

For Alaska Governor Candidates, willing to commit an administration that will follow the Sustainable Salmon Fisheries Policy and state fisheries management to attain all established salmon escapement goals, there are a large number of sport and inriver user voters who would specifically like to know about your commitment — before next fall’s election.

Good Luck and Fish On!

Although Andy Couch is a member of the MSB 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.