Where's the fish?

MAT-SU — More king salmon have begun trickling into area streams, giving at least some hope to biologists that this year’s run is just running behind schedule.

“We got a pretty big bump yesterday,” area sportfish biologist Dave Rutz said Monday.

Rutz was speaking of the Deshka River, which last week was closed to bait because of extremely low numbers of fish counted upstream of an ADFG weir. Rutz said that more than 500 fish were counted passing the weir Sunday. That’s still very low, but more than the couple dozen biologists had been seeing.

“Those aren’t the thousand fish numbers or anything, but it’s better,” Rutz said.

Rutz said that the historical peak for king salmon returns to the Valley is typically around the 19th of June, meaning that by now there should have been several thousand fish entering the river. The Deshka, which empties into the Susitna River, has a low-end escapement goal of 13,000 kings for the early run. As of Monday, only around 1,200 had made it upstream.

Rutz said the department will continue to monitor the situation closely, and will likely decide if further restrictions need to be put in place on sport fishermen.

The low numbers aren’t specific to the Deshka or even the Mat-Su area. King salmon across the state have been late in arriving, which commercial fisheries biologist Jeff Fox in Soldotna said he believes is due to an unusually chilly spring.

“All over the state it’s the same thing,” Fox said.

Fox said he’s still holding out hope that the fish are still on their way. He said commercial set net fisheries in the inlet have seen their catches improve dramatically over the past few days, which is a good sign that there’s still plenty of kings in Cook Inlet waiting to head for home.

“Right now, things are looking better,” he said.

At this point, Fox said shutting down the two small set net fisheries currently fishing the inlet isn’t warranted. However, he did say he’ll be closely monitoring the situation, which could mean commercial fishing times get cut.

“Over the next week or so, we’ll look at it,” he said.

Fox said he believes the king run is running about eight to 10 days late this year, and said he’s confident that the recent increase in fish counts means the fish are coming.

“There are more fish out there,” he said.

Fishing around the Valley continues to be slow at best. Anglers have been reporting some action on the Little Susitna River and Deshka River, but kings continue to be hard to come by. Another popular fishing hole, the Eklutna Tailrace in the Butte, is also very slow.

On Monday, roughly two dozen anglers gathered at the tailrace, which empties its clear water into the silty Knik River. Wasilla angler Cody Swenson said he’s been fishing the tailrace nearly every day this spring, but has yet to hook a salmon.

“Real slow,” Swenson said.

But he’s not giving up hope. Casting a silver and orange Vibrax spinner into the mouth of the tailrace, Swenson said he saw two kings caught in one day last week.

“You never know,” he said.

Contact Matt Tunseth at 352-2265 or matt.tunseth@

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