Pike take a hike — Fish and Game applies to treat Stormy Lake with Rotenone

By Jenny Neyman

Photo by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Alaska Department of Fish and Game provided examples of pike specimens at public meetings last spring regarding plans to eradicate pike from Stormy Lake in Nikiski.

Redoubt Reporter

Invasive northern pike have been served with an eviction notice at Stormy Lake north of Nikiski, to be enforced this fall if the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s application for a pesticide use permit is approved by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. Once pike are gone, native fish species will be invited back home.

The permit is up for public comment through 4 p.m. Feb. 23. Comments may be submitted by mail to Rebecca Colvin, 555 Cordova St., Anchorage, AK 99501. To view the application, visit www.dec.state.ak.us/eh/pest/publicnotice.htm. For more information, call 269-7802 or email Rebecca.Colvin@alaska.gov.

Fish and Game has prepared an environmental assessment on the Stormy Lake project, as well. To view that document, visit http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/species/nonnative/invasive/rotenone/pdfs/stormy_lake_ea.pdf. Comments on the environmental assessment may be submitted be email to robert.massengill@alaska.gov, by mail at 43961 K-Beach Road, Suite B Soldotna, AK 99669, or by calling Robert Massengill, fishery biologist, at 262‐9368.

If approved, Fish and Game plans to treat Stormy Lake with the pesticide Rotenone sometime in August or September. The lake would be closed to public access during the treatment and the following cleanup period, with signage warning people away from the water.

“Once treatment is completed, we would discourage drinking the water or swimming until the Rotenone fully deactivates, we’re anticipating two to six weeks after the treatment,” said Robert Massengill, fishery biologist with Fish and Game.

Pike are native to much of Alaska and many areas of the Lower 48, and as big, active, tough fish, they’re a lot of fun to catch. Anglers’ affinity for pike is thought to be the way they spread from their native range into Southcentral Alaska. Pike penetrated into Alaska from Russia when the state was still glaciated. They settled into regions north and west of the Alaska Range, where they don’t cause many problems. They evolved along with other fish species. The other species developed predator-avoidance abilities.

Pike are notoriously voracious eaters, preferring soft-finned salmonids, like salmon, Dolly Varden and rainbow trout, but also eat sticklebacks, leeches, insects or most anything else they can get their sharp, tooth-laden jaws around. They live in shallow, still, weedy water. In Bristol Bay, and other regions with native pike populations, the lakes tend to be large and deep. Pike stick close to shore while other fish, especially pike’s preferred meal of juvenile salmonids, can rear in deeper water.

Old Duck Hunter: Derby a chance to reel in a good time

By Steve Meyer, for the Redoubt Reporter

“I think maybe this year I’ll focus on just one species.” This is a quote from my fishing partner/Trustworthy Ice Fishing Derby contestant, who, for the previous four years has entered the “Flush” category that entails catching one each of rainbow trout, northern pike, Arctic char, kokanee and lake trout.

Thus far she is the only woman to do it, much less four years in row. Being the supporting cast for her fame and, well, not much fortune, I have broken the trails to remote lakes, pulled the sled loaded with ice fishing equipment and drilled an astonishing number of holes. One would suspect there might be a sigh of relief with that announcement. Sort of.

Truth is, her passion for the derby has taken me places I may not have ever gone in the winter. I can attest that pulling a sled loaded with equipment to Crescent Lake and drilling 16 holes before she found the near trophy-size grayling that would win her first place in that year’s derby was one of those really great experiences even though, at the onset, it showed little promise.

Being in the high country with no one around, wolverine tracks crossing our paths as we made our way, ptarmigan huddled amongst the barely visible willow patches and bright sun that belied the cold temperatures, is normal for ptarmigan hunting with my English setter, but it also made for a pretty darn unique day of ice fishing.

This year, being the first real winter we have had in many years, the going is going to be a bit tougher. The snow cover will make breaking trail into remote areas considerably more difficult than in the recent past. The extended period of cold temperatures is likely to put the fish bite at less than good, and one will have to work a little harder for a trophy fish.

On the other hand, country previously visited is going to look a little different and probably even look more beautiful than it usually does. In spite of the cold temperatures, the snow cover has limited the ice thickness. Of course the deep snow around the hole will require a bit more attention, but nothing one of those small aluminum or plastic snow shovels can’t deal with.

If it remains really cold and one is fishing without benefit of an ice shanty, icing of the line will be a real problem. The various ice lines, our favorite being the Berkley Fireline Fused Micro Ice Crystal, do help with keeping line from icing up. But, make no mistake, they do not eliminate the problem. When it is minus 25 the line ices up, but that does not affect the line’s strength, so just break ice off as it accumulates.

Old Duck Hunter: Get practical for outdoors enthusiasts on your list

By Steve Meyer, for the Redoubt Reporter

“I just don’t know what to get — (pick a name) for Christmas.”

Haven’t we all heard that or said it ourselves a thousand, or maybe at least 20, times? It doesn’t have to be that way if the person you are thinking of is a hunter, fisher or trapper. There are myriad things out there that they can use, will appreciate and, more than likely, won’t regift to someone else.
In a somewhat random order I’ll give some hints for gift-givers who may not be in touch with what these sorts of folks might like.

• Knifes are a basic, essential piece of equipment for the out of doors. There are literally hundreds of models to choose from, but a good share of them are basically worthless. Except they might look real sexy.

There is a knife out there that every outdoorsperson can utilize very effectively and for a very reasonable price — the Havlon Piranha. This knife comes in a couple of sizes, both of which are very reasonable and useable as a pocket-type knife — the point being they are easy to carry and actually are available to use.

They are folding knifes and come in a couple of colors. Most of us have set a knife down during a skinning job and can’t find it when you go to pick it up again. The blaze orange version is a real help in actually being able to find the knife. And being a pocketknife, it isn’t like you have to worry about being glaringly offensive at a party or something.

Looks aside, the thing that is so useful in these knives is the changeable, surgical-steel blades. Yep, the knife gets dull, you pop the blade off and put on a new one and you’re back in business.

Steeling fishing resolve — Autumn angling can be hot for those braving the cold

By Joseph Robertia

Photos courtesy of Jim Coburn. Dan Adair shows off his catch during a fall fishing trip on the Kenai River.

Redoubt Reporter

Jim Coburn got up before dawn to make the long drive from his home in Nikiski to fish the Kenai River, and when he saw a massive slab of silver fly into the air, he immediately new the early rise was worth it.

Coburn’s lure was being crushed in the gnarled, curving beak of the salmon that had obviously spent some time in the river. But by its sea-bright color and the fight it was already putting up, it was clear this silver salmon was far from spawned out.

The rod arched under the heavy pulling power with each run the fish made. Coburn’s pulse quickened with each scream of the reel. The battle was fierce but ultimately brief, and in the end, man prevailed over fish.

Netting good verse — Fisher poets spin salty tales

By Jenny Neyman

Cook Inlet commercial fishing photos by Pat Dixon, at the old Ward’s Cove cannery in Kenai.

Redoubt Reporter

If experience is the germ of poetry; exposure to the almighties of life, death, weather and time is the fertilization; and minds left free to stew it all together is the greenhouse in which the seed grows; then fishermen are predisposed poets.

“There’s a romance of the sea that I think is very real. I think that’s part of what draws people to fishing,” said Pat Dixon, a writer, photographer and commercial drift-net fisherman in upper Cook Inlet for two decades.

“I think the industry that sets you out — man against nature, alone — there’s a lot of solitude about it. At the same time there’s a lot of beauty. A cowboy and his horse, a fisherman and his boat, there are a lot of parallels there and they seem to work for telling good stories and arriving at some revelations,” Dixon said.

At the Fisher Poets gathering this weekend in Kenai, fishing tales will be shared in a variety of styles — song, poetry, prose, storytelling — as fitting of an industry using a variety of gear — gill nets, long lines, crab pots, seines. Unlike fish tales, where the subject is the catch and its ever-growing proportions and prowess at escaping capture, the Fisher Poets movement is more about the lifestyle of harvesting a living from the sea.

“I remember thinking after every fishing period that I would fish, we’d come in and everybody would have some sort of a story — something that happened that day,” Dixon said. “And I remember thinking, ‘Boy, these should be written down, because even the smallest ones, the funny ones, the ones that weren’t really dangerous, were still interesting and so unusual, and it’s such an usual lifestyle that it was attractive to write about.”

Stock up on king data — Genetic testing adds to Kenai, inlet knowledge

By Jenny Neyman

Photos courtesy of Tim McKinley, Alaska Department of Fish and Game. An Alaska Department of Fish and Game technician takes a tissue sample from a monster king salmon at the Fish and Game test-net site on the lower Kenai River. Samples are run through genetic testing to determine which spawning stock the fish is from.

Redoubt Reporter

As much as we might wish them to, fish simply don’t talk. Though biologists and fishery managers in Cook Inlet are constantly trying to learn more about king salmon, especially those from the Kenai River, pulling a chinook alongside a boat and asking it, “Where you from?” “Been here long?” or “Where you headed?” does not elicit a response. At least, not in so many words.

But advances in genetic testing make it just about that easy to get much better acquainted with king salmon.

“It’s pretty simple anymore,” said Tim McKinley, research biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Sport Fish Division. “In this business, when there’s a change in technology there’s rapid learning that goes on about your critter of interest. It’s kind of like when they put the Hubble Telescope up there. It was a whole new leap in technology for the astronomers and physicists and everything else.”

The leap for fishery biologists came with improvements in genetic testing that led to much easier and cheaper ways to derive information from tissue samples. Twenty-five years or so ago, genetic sampling of salmon was a time-intensive, technical, expensive and deadly process.

“If you were going to take genetic samples from fish you had to kill the fish because you were taking all kinds of weird stuff — like heart tissue or kidney or liver and blood. And then, once you took that sample, it had to be preserved using stuff like liquid nitrogen,” McKinley said.

Running the genetic testing lab work could cost a couple hundred dollars per sample.

“If you needed to run dozens or hundreds or thousands of samples, it gets ridiculous,” McKinley said.

Landing lasting memories with fish taxidermy

By Joseph Robertia

Photos by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Ken Johnson, owner of Fantasies in Fiberglass in Sterling, shows of some of the projects he is current working on. Johnson has been a taxidermist for more than 25 years.

Redoubt Reporter

Ken Johnson put the finishing touches on the massive, 88-pound king salmon in front of him. But he wasn’t gutting it, steaking it out or shaving fillets from its ribs. Rather than focusing attention on the pink meat that would ordinarily comprise the bulk of such a behemoth, his interest was scale deep.

Johnson was carefully adorning glass eyes and putting globs of thick resin in the fish’s mouth, then slowly pulling back on the globs to form teeth identical to that which the salmon had in real life.

“I usually put at least 15 to 20 hours into a fish,” he said. “Painting a king alone can take three hours. It’s a lot of layering with an airbrush to get the colors you’re looking for. I think all taxidermists agonize over panting. Once you start and see it coming along you’re fine, but you have to have an eye for it and have had a lot of practice.”

Practice is one thing Johnson has in spades. Owner of Fantasies in Fiberglass, in Sterling, he has been doing fish taxidermy for more than 25 years. His work is all around town, including displays in the Peninsula Center Mall, the Reel Café, Trustworthy Hardware and the Sportsmen’s Den guide service at Trustworthy.

He got his start from a humble beginning, after making a purchase from a sporting goods store.

“I was in Weatherby’s and saw a book on taxidermy for $3.95, so I bought it. In there it had a section on how to do a skin mount and that’s how I got started. It was just for fun at first,” he said.

Working through the fish process — Huge sockeye catch floods processors with sea of salmon

By Jenny Neyman

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Zach Oakley, left, and Coy Kirby fillet sockeye salmon at Custom Seafood Processors in Soldotna on Friday. Fish processors report record-setting amounts of sockeye flooding into their plants.

Redoubt Reporter

After a couple 16-hour days in a row trying to keep up with the sea of sockeye salmon pouring into Custom Seafood Processors, in Soldotna, brought by dip-netters and sportfishermen hauling them from the massive runs surging into the Kenai and Kasilof rivers, Coy Kirby said he could fillet fish with his eyes closed.

In a way, he has been.

“You work 16-hour days, then you go to sleep and you dream about filleting fish. You wake up and you’re filleting your girlfriend’s pillow,” said Kirby, 23, of Soldotna.

Next to him on the line Friday, deftly slicking his knife along each side of a salmon spine, peeling red flesh from white bone and silver carcass, was Zach Oakley, 20, of Soldotna. He’s also been feeling the effects of the recent swell of salmon.

“You have some weird dreams,” he said. “I had a dream last night that I was putting all my stuff in bags — my wallet and socks and all my random things — and vacuum sealing it,” Oakley said.

The sea has bestowed an unexpected bounty upon Cook Inlet — a bumper sockeye run to the Kenai and Kasilof rivers — surprising in both the amount of fish and their early arrival. Usually, the Kenai sockeye run hits its peak the last week of July. This year, however, the sockeye counter in the Kenai River clocked a record-breaking 230,643 on July 17, followed by another whopping 177,000-plus on July 18.

That wave of sockeyes has drawn a rising tide of fishing effort, especially as the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has liberalized opportunities — extra openings for commercial drift- and set-netters, 24-hour personal-use dip-netting, and increased bag limits for sport anglers.

Anglers protest losing bait — Kenai sportfishermen bristle at restrictions while commercial fishery is liberalized

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.

Old Duck Hunter: Catching the bug of fly-fishing

By Steve Meyer, for the Redoubt Reporter

Brad Pitt taught me to fly-fish.

Photos courtesy of Steve Meyer. The results of a morning of lake fly-fishing.

Well, not really, but I did see “A River Runs Through It.” The truth is, I have seen fly-fishing in magazines and books, mostly from the past when I was a kid and had some thoughts of someday being a part of that honorable outdoor tradition. But then we moved to Alaska and I quickly was swallowed up in the hardware and bait fishing that most everyone else does. Never being as much of a fisherman as a hunter, I just never seemed to have time to pursue this grand outdoor tradition.

July 1, 2010, changed that. My fishing partner and I, in an annual tradition, headed up to our favorite mountain lake for the opening of grayling season. We have a spot that we fish and have had no difficulty catching all the grayling we wanted using hardware — Mepps and Vibrex spinners, Rooster Tails, small Syclops and Pixies were all we ever needed. But last year the fish were being stubborn and wanted nothing to do with what we were offering.

Kenai River sees record number of sockeyes

Photos courtesy of Patrice Kohl, Alaska Department of Fish and Game

Alaska Department of Fish and Game technician Ronda McGrady watches the department’s fish wheel scoop salmon from the Kenai River at the sockeye salmon counter site at mile 19 of the river Monday. She and technician Jerry Strait were at the fish wheel Monday to measure and take scale samples. The technicians are tasked with measuring and sampling 10 percent of the run. A record-breaking 230,643 sockeyes were counted in the river Sunday.

A graph showing the spike in the Kenai River sockeye count Sunday, posted on the Fish and Game sonar count page Monday.

Srait removes a fish from the live box at the sockeye counter site. The salmon collect in the fish box, then the technicians remove them one by one, take a scale sample and measure them.Strait measures a fish at the sockeye counter site in the Kenai River on Monday.Strait releases the sockeye after measuring it and taking a scale sample.

Tools of the fish count trade — Fish and Game wrestles to land accurate Kenai king sonar data

By Jenny Neyman

Photo courtesy of Tony Eskelin, Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Motorboats pass the Alaska Department of Fish and Game king sonar counter site at mile 8.6 of the Kenai River. Boat wakes create bubbles in the water, which can compromise the sonar’s effectiveness. Though locating the king sonar site in the lower river presents challenges, moving it upstream would mean it would see even more boat traffic.

Redoubt Reporter

As any carpenter, chef or fisherman can tell you, the right tools help get the job done right.

In a pinch, a wrench can work to drive a nail, a fork can whisk a soufflé and a trout net can land up to a midsized king salmon, but the desired result is going to be arrived at much more easily and precisely by employing the exact instrument crafted for that specific situation.

The same goes for counting salmon heading upstream to spawn. Biologists and technicians with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game have a variety of tools they can use to do the job, but each works a little differently and performs better under some conditions than others. At the Kenai River king salmon sonar counter at river mile 8.6, producing fish counts using split-beam sonar is a little like using a crowbar to extract a screw. Even with the considerable amount of care, fine-tuning and finesse used to analyze the data, split-beam sonar estimates still come in stripped of some context.

Although split-beam was at one time cutting-edge technology, the tool just isn’t quite customized to the challenging and changing conditions of counting kings in the Kenai. And as new technology comes along, Fish and Game is realizing even better just how ill fitting split-beam can be for the job.

“These tools were not developed with these conditions in mind. We do know it’s not performing well and we’re pretty sure we know why and we’re working to revise it,” said Debby Burwen, regional Fish and Game sonar biologist. “What we have now is a lot better than what we used to have, but on the other hand, it still has its shortcomings. We’re aware of them and we’re constantly trying to figure out what conditions are causing the shortcomings.”