By Jenny Neyman
Submitted photo. Sportfishermen and guides clog the parking lot of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game on Kalifornsky Beach Road on Monday to protest restrictions on the Kenai River king fishing, while commercial fishermen are seeing liberalized openings for sockeyes.
Redoubt Reporter
Mondays being drift-boat-only days on the Kenai River, with no power boats allowed, they are typically the only day a week off fishing guides with power boats get all week. This Monday guides still hitched their boats to their trucks and went angling. But instead of heading to the river to help their clients catch king salmon, as they would any other day of the week, it was to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game office on Kalifornsky Beach Road to angle for king-friendly support from fishery managers.
About 100 guides, as well as fishing clients and private sportfishermen, plugged the Fish and Game parking lot with trucks, boats and trailers and staged a protest outside the office at about 7 a.m. Monday.
The purpose was to demonstrate their displeasure with measures to restrict king fishing in the Kenai while at the same time liberalizing commercial fishing in Cook Inlet.
“We were there just to show, ‘Hey, we take this seriously and we hope that they do too,’” said Dave Goggia, president of the Kenai River Professional Guides Association.
Fishery managers are faced with what Goggia calls a perfect storm of factors this summer. The late run of king salmon to the Kenai is returning in such low numbers as to be in danger of not meeting the minimum escapement goal, so managers are instituting fishing restrictions to try and get more kings to their spawning grounds. Kenai River dip-netters are no longer allowed to keep kings caught in their nets. Upstream, from about the outlet of Slikok Creek to the outlet of Skilak Lake, king fishing is catch and release only for kings 20 inches up to 55 inches. On Friday, an emergency order was released that as of Monday, bait would no longer be allowed from the river mouth to the outlet of Skilak Lake.
That isn’t the issue, Goggia said. Sportfishermen and guides are willing to accept fishing restrictions in order to protect the health of the king run, he said. What they don’t accept is that commercial fishermen are getting more opportunities to have their nets in the water, in an attempt to stem the flow of a monster, two-times-bigger-than-anticipated run of sockeye from flooding the Kenai and Kasilof rivers and surpassing escapement goals. Commercial fishing in the inlet for sockeyes inevitably snags some king salmon, as well.
“The fish should come first and we’re all about putting the fish first,” Goggia said. “They restricted us but the commercial fishermen get more fishing time, so the restrictions on us don’t produce any extra fish to the spawning grounds because they’re not getting into the river. So our main issue (Monday) was just to be able to go and talk to them and let them know it’s high on our priority list as fishermen to really save these kings. And if they’re going to do that, if they restrict us, they should restrict commercial fishing also.
“Going to no bait is the right thing to do, because they’re concerned with the
Submitted photo. Protestors hold signs up to passing traffic along Kalifornsky Beach Road on Monday, during a demonstration outside Fish and Game.
numbers (of kings). So the sport fish division, we feel like has done a great job, but the com fish division should recognize that and say, ‘Well, if they’re having trouble meeting the minimum escapement (for kings), maybe we should do something, too, to help,” he said.
It’s not that simple, Fish and Game biologists told Goggia in a meeting Monday. The Division of Sport Fish has a management plan that delineates measures to be taken to bolster low king salmon escapement numbers — from limiting bait to only allowing catch and release to a complete shutdown of king fishing. Meanwhile, the Division of Commercial Fisheries has a management plan for handling bumper sockeye runs that allows for expanding commercial fishing periods in order to try and prevent too many fish from entering the river, even if that means more kings are caught in commercial nets. The two plans don’t have an easy mechanism for working in conjunction with each other, such as allowing for restricting commercial fishing for sockeyes in order to bolster king numbers.
“It’s like the perfect storm — too many sockeye, not enough kings. What do you do? The management plan doesn’t take that into account,” Goggia said. “They have a management plan and they can’t do too much outside their management plan, so we called for the commissioner to step in and make those type of choices.”
The Alaska Board of Fisheries instituted a 24-hour window limiting commercial sockeye fishing in the central district of Cook Inlet on Tuesdays, but in extra-large sockeye runs that window goes out the window. Goggia said he’d like Fish and Game Commissioner Cora Campbell to allow strategies outside the management plan and re-institute that window in order to let more kings in the river.
“We’re saying let common sense step in here and to get the minimum escapement (on kings), just slow them (commercial fishing) down out there. Put that 24-hour window back in place, get some fish into the Kenai River, and then we’re good. We don’t have to worry about a complete closure,” Goggia said. “We realize that we need commercial fishing, too, because there are so many fish (sockeyes) out there. If they could just slow them down and let the kings get in it would be the best of both worlds.”
The commercial fishing management plan for sockeyes is geared to avoid overescapement, as putting in too many fish can overtax the spawning and rearing capabilities of the river system and hurt future runs. Goggia said this giant return of sockeyes, now estimated at about 6 to 7 million, up from preseason predictions of 3.5 to 4 million, shows that overescapement isn’t the boogeyman it’s been made out to be, since this run is the offspring of previous runs that were considered to be overescaped. The argument is that other, unquantified factors may be contributing to the run’s strength — such as better-than-usual ocean survivability.
Regardless, Goggia said fears of an overescapement of sockeyes shouldn’t trump concerns of underscapement of kings.
“For years commercial fishermen have been talking about overescapement, overescapement, overescapement. We’re saying it’s just a myth,” Goggia said. “The reason why this (sockeye) run is coming in so large is because of three years of overescapement. So we’re saying that when you have a run like this (king run) that’s coming in low and having trouble meeting its minimum escapement, it’s OK to overescape (sockeyes) at least one year.”
Local fishery biologists don’t have the authority to make a decision like that, and Goggia said the personnel he met with Monday said they would relay his concerns and suggestions to Commissioner Campbell. After the meeting, at about 9:15 a.m., the protest dispersed. Though Alaska State Troopers were on hand, the protest was peaceful, Goggia said.
On the river, reactions to the announcement of the bait restriction flared Friday, said Ivan Karic, a fisheries technician for Fish and Game who has been conducting creel surveys on the Kenai for about the last 10 years. That puts him in touch with 50 to 75 people each day he’s on the river.
Rumors travel quick on the river, and he said king fishermen and guides started stirring about possible bait restrictions early last week.
“By Friday, when (Fish and Game) did make the announcement, well, that really got the water boiling, so to speak,” Karic said.
He’s noticed a change in attitude among sportfishermen and guides over the years, he said. It seems that people have recognized the resource has diminished and are willing to accept restrictions in order to protect the king run. But sportfishing being restricted while commercial fishing increases is a sure way to get most sportfishermen and guides riled up.
“By and large, guides and most people accept management decisions. They understand the situation as far as escapements and this and that,” Karic said. “I think they were willing to accept it on the chin, but they would want to also see the commercial people having to compromise, as well, that some kind of restriction should be placed on them. And because that wasn’t to be, that really got them hot underneath the collars.”
Abrasion between sport and commercial viewpoints is nothing new on the Kenai, Karic said.
“I think it’s always when the sockeye come, that’s when all the anger comes along as well. You can mark it down on the calendar,” he said.
But this year has been a little different. It’s the first time he can recall a protest being staged, Karic said.
But by and large, Karic said the prevailing attitude on the river had been fairly rosy of late, before the no-bait restriction was announced. King fishing in the early run in June was weak, with low, clear water creating poor fishing conditions on top of a low run. But in July, water conditions were much more optimal for catching. Even though there weren’t a lot of fish entering the river, anglers were still having success catching them, which puts people in a good mood.
“When it opened up to bait the fishing was absolutely tremendous. Smiley faces, everybody was just deliriously happy,” Karic said. “I’m thinking to myself, once I got wind of these high index figures where the sockeye were concerned, I immediately knew that once these fish came marching in, there’s going to be emergency order after emergency order after emergency order, and that’s when all hell is going to break loose and all that happy demeanor is going to be just gone. And sure enough, when that sockeye came in, boy golly so did the complaints.”
Karic thinks that the relatively high success rate of king fishing in July has contributed to the sting of fishing restrictions being announced. It can be a bitter pill to take that sportfishing should be restricted — especially when commercial fishing is not — while anglers are having luck catching.
“Even if you have a small number of fish coming through, fishing conditions were just absolutely ideal. Everyone was so pleased with that factor and they couldn’t understand how there could be such small returning numbers, yet the fishing was so great. They would normally assume you’d have to have a large number of fish returning for there to be a large catch rate — a lot of fish being harvested means a lot of fish coming into the river. So when a decision like this is made, about the low returns, it just doesn’t sink in with them, unfortunately,” Karic said.
He said he listened to a lot of venting Friday, some of which blew up into accusations about bribery, corruption and bias of Fish and Game toward the commercial fishing industry. But overall he said that sportfishermen and anglers who have educated themselves about the issues are more understanding, though still frustrated, especially if the bait restriction means guides, bed and breakfasts and all the rest of the associated tourism industry will lose customers.
“You can understand the sentiment. It’s all just very emotional,” Karic said.
The only balm he can produce is to try and explain the situation, and point out that while bait is curtailed, fishing is still allowed.
“It’s almost like they were feeling as though it was going to catch and release, or a complete shutdown, that’s how it almost felt. People forgot the fact that you can still harvest. Your ability to catch is still quite high and conditions are still very good for that,” Karic said.
