State gets an earful on cohos

About 80 Valley and Anchorage area residents attended a meeting with Fish and Game at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center last week to learn the division’s perspective on how the 2012 salmon season had been managed and to ask how Fish and Game proposes to manage the 2013 season.

Rep. Mark Neuman opened the meeting by stating that Fish and Game would give a status update on our Northern District salmon stocks and also address nine written questions submitted prior to the meeting concerning specific aspects of the management of the Cook Inlet fishery in 2012. Several state legislators and one Mat-Su Borough Assembly member were among the group assembled to hear Fish and Game’s take on the 2012 salmon season in Cook Inlet.

Sam Ivey, the area management biologist for Sport Fish Division in Palmer, led off the department presentation. Ivey said the king salmon populations in the Northern District have been on a downward trend since 2007. He stated that 17 separate stocks of king salmon are monitored for escapements and that only one of those stocks is counted using a weir. Ivey explained that the other 16 stocks are counted using a one-pass aerial count from a helicopter, and these counts serve to indicate trends in returning numbers of fish as opposed to being total counts of fish in the system.

Ivey said that only five of the 17 monitored king salmon stocks made their minimum escapement goals in 2011.

“We thought the 2012 returns would be a little stronger than 2011,” he continued, “but the runs turned out to be weaker and only four of the 17 systems made their 2012 escapement goals.”

When asked about probable restrictions for the 2013 king salmon sportfishing season, Ivey explained that even more restrictions would likely be mandated.

Bob Clark, senior fisheries scientist for the Sport Fish Division, said the causes for the poor king salmon returns are largely unknown and in order to learn more about Valley stocks, four more weirs will be installed and monitored in the Valley, in addition to the Deshka and Little Susitna weirs, to learn more about king salmon returns and to get better counts of returning fish.

The 2012 coho season was equally as bad in the Valley according to Ivey. He explained the history of how the Little Susitna River was managed for coho in both 2011 and 2012, including monitoring poor catch rates and imposing early season closures both years.

Pat Shields, the area management biologist for the Commercial Fisheries Division in Soldotna, was next up. He explained the unprecedented closure of the East Side set gillnet fishery due to poor returns on the late run king salmon to the Kenai River and the subsequent extensive use of the drift gillnet fleet to harvest sockeye returning to both the Kenai and Kasilof Rivers. Shields stated that the primary use of the drift fleet to harvest sockeye also resulted in a greater catch of coho and that the department plans to be more vigilant in monitoring the commercial coho catch in 2013.

The consensus was that 2012 was a weak return year for coho in the inlet, but the tone of a few questions asked by audience members indicated they viewed the way the commercial fishery was managed, resulting in the interception of northern-bound coho by the drift fleet, as contributing to the even poorer returns to the Northern District.

Shields received some recognition for having, arguably, the toughest fisheries management position in the state, but was also called on a comment he made during his presentation. While explaining the catch by the drift fleet during a couple of openings in late July, Shields stated that about 750,000 sockeyes were harvested and only about 20,000 coho. He felt that was a good trade-off in sockeye caught verses coho caught. An audience member questioned the good trade-off concept, saying that catching 20,000 coho in two commercial openings is not considered a good trade in the Northern District given the poor coho returns areawide.

The meeting was cordial, but most attendees left with the impression that poor returns of both king and coho salmon have dominated recent years in the Valley and these poor return trends appear likely to continue into the future for all five salmon species.

The meeting was co-hosted by the Mat-Su Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission and Rep. Neuman.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

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.