Fishermen Find Fun During Slow Salmon Times

When we brush the dust off the water skis and the crewmen take turns carving through the skiff's wake before dropping into 45-degree water wearing just shorts, it's a sure sign that it's been a slow salmon season.

I married into salmon fishing three years ago. Since then, we've spent May through October at our setnet site in Uyak Bay, on the west side of Kodiak Island. This summer is my first experience with fishing closures lasting more than a day or two. In previous seasons, we worked nonstop all summer, with little time for hiking, building or gardening.

Because my husband grew up spending every summer at this site, he has never experienced the summer activities I considered childhood standards while growing up in the Interior. He has never mowed a lawn or chased swallowtails or ridden his bike from sunup to sundown for days on end. But coming to this life now, as an adult, I will never be as calm as he is driving the skiff, as good at spotting whale flukes and otters, or as comfortable leaving town for five months without missing ripe peaches, ice cream and summer road trips with the car windows down.

Over time, I have grown comfortable with the extremes of a fishing schedule. When pinks are heavy, the teapot whistles at 5 a.m. and the Alaska evening light almost makes our midnight dinners seem reasonable. At a setnet site, those long hours sometimes challenge the balance of work and family life. I don't get upset anymore at dinners that have lost all shape and color after cooking for hours while we waited for the tender to arrive.

This summer, fishermen around the bay have been taking skiff rides, firing up banyas, practicing guitar or talking about books over the radio. This year was the first time since I've been at our site that the Fourth of July setnetter picnic could actually be held on the Fourth of July.

I know I should be wishing for nets sunk with fish and pinks jumping abundant as rain. When fishing is your livelihood, you aren't supposed to appreciate a slow season. You check the weir counts, you ask your neighbors if they've heard anything or seen any jumpers. But for the first time, we spent leisurely August mornings together, drinking coffee and watching our 1-year-old run laps around the cabin. We had time to put up a swing on the front porch. The engines and nets are cleaner than they have been for years...

http://www.adn.com/life/story/518424.html

See also Fishing for Alaska Salmon

Alaska Silver Report

There was little traffic on the Kenai River on this mid week morning.
Maybe folks didn't know that the silvers are in!

Once again, we went with Jimmie Jack of Jimmie Jack fishing and he had a plan.
"We are fishing with plugs, just sitting on anchor waiting for them to hit," said Jimmie. "So they're swimming up and we're sitting in their way. It's pretty easy fishing. It's probably the easiest fishing you can do."

He wasn't kidding.

Sandy, a friend of Jimmies, hooked a silver right away...

http://www.ktuu.com/Global/story.asp?S=8956634

See also Alaska Silver Salmon Fishing

Fishing Location Spotlight - Kodiak

Dave Densmore is a lifelong fisherman, earning a full share on a Kodiak seiner by the time he was 12 and purchasing his first boat soon after. He currently fishes salmon out of Kodiak and is
gearing up for crab...

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080922/OPINION/809220346

See also Alaska Fishing Spots

Fishing Guide Battle With Slow Run Perceptions

It's bad enough that so few salmon have trickled up the Deshka River that the state last month was forced to close the Susitna Valley's most popular king fishery.

But guide services, lodge operators and others in the Su Valley sportfishing sector are also battling the perception that there are no fish in Alaska, period -- even as salmon are finally showing up in some area rivers and streams.

Reports of the Deshka closure, coupled with news stories about poor returns throughout much of Alaska, scared off at least a quarter of the clients at iFish Alaska Guide Service.

Pat Donelson, owner of iFish, spent Wednesday floating the Little Susitna River with customers.
"Most people aren't canceling because they're that set to go on the Deshka," Donelson said, reporting slow but steady fishing on the Little Su. "They're canceling because they've heard fishing just isn't good...

http://www.adn.com/matsu/story/455431.html

See also fly fishing in Alaska

Chitina Dip Net Fishing Is Slow

Dip netting for red salmon in the Copper River is still reported to be slow and an extended closure of the commercial fishery in Cordova will result in decreased fishing time for dip-netters later this month, area management biologist Mark Somerville at ADF&G in Glennallen said.

The Chitina dip net fishery will remain open through July 13 but after that there will almost certainly be reductions in fishing time. The extended closure of Cordova’s commercial fishing fleet, which reached 13 days on Tuesday, triggered a reduction in harvest for the personal-use fishery, Somerville said.

As of Tuesday, the commercial fishing fleet had been shut down for 13 straight days and the sonar count at Miles Lake still had not caught up to preseason projections. The sonar counts did not go up as expected with commercial fishers out of the water...

http://newsminer.com/news/2008/jul/03/dip-netters-face-cuts-fishing-time-chitina/

See also Alaska sockeye salmon fishing

A Day in the Life of a Novice Fisherwoman

I've never considered myself much of a fisherwoman, but catching a few halibut last year got me started thinking that, with a little practice, I could be pretty bad-ass. So it made perfect sense to grab a friend and plan a day of fishing.A quick pooling of our finances showed that getting out of town and renting a canoe as we'd originally hoped to do just wasn't going to happen.

We grumbled for a bit about the soulless gas-guzzling society we live in while lamenting the fact that we couldn't afford to guzzle our own share. Then we decided to hit a few local lakes instead.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game stocks many area lakes with trout, char, grayling and land-locked salmon. For boatless folks like us that had no urge to combat fish in the last days of the Ship Creek king salmon fishery, this was perfect. I fantasized about catching a sleek, glittery trout and cooking it up that night. I figured that an 18- to 20-incher would be about perfect...

http://www.anchoragepress.com/site/basicarticle.asp?ID=709

Tough Times For Yukon King Fishermen

FAIRBANKS — The king salmon run in the Yukon River may not be as bad as state fisheries biologists thought, but it still won’t likely be big enough to fill fish racks and smokehouses in many villages on the middle and upper part of the river, or meet Alaska’s international treaty obligations to Canada.

Thanks to a late spike of fish, biologists with the Department of Fish and Game upped their projection for this year’s chinook run past a sonar counter on the lower Yukon from 80,000 last week to as high as 120,000 this week, which is still short of the required 140,000 needed for adequate spawning numbers and a sufficient subsistence harvest.

http://newsminer.com/news/2008/jul/03/yukon-river-life-takes-hit-because-dismal-king-sal/

See also Alaska guided fishing