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

Unalaska Opens for Commercial Fishing

Unalaska's commercial salmon season opened over the weekend with four fishing vessels seeking pinks in Unalaska and Makushin bays.

The area has opened to commercial salmon fishing every year since the early 1980s, but Alaska Department of Fish & Game biologist Forrest Bowers says it's not always fished.

"There's been about two roughly five year periods since 1982 when we haven't had a fishery," he explains. "And that wasn't necessarily because the fishery was closed, that's just because people didn't come out to the area to fish...

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kial/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1334094&sectionID=1

See also Fishing in Alaska

First Time Alaska Visitor Makes Big Catch

Two years in the making, George Wambold's perfect summer was topped with a whale of a Kenai king salmon.

Only a day before the July 31 end of the season on the state's most popular salmon stream, Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials say Wambold landed the biggest Kenai king registered with the state trophy fish program this year. It weighed 72 3/4 pounds.

It had a girth of 32-inches, Wambold added, about the waist-size for a pair of pants for your average American male before the obesity epidemic hit.

An angler most of his life, Wambold had never seen such a fish. "It looked the size of an alligator,'' he said...

http://www.adn.com/fishing/story/486200.html