Where there’s a willet, there’s a way — Kenai Flats hosts 1st confirmed sighting of bird rare to Alaska

By Jenny Neyman

Photos courtesy of Laura Burke. A western willet has been seen on the flats at the mouth of the Kenai River. The bird is common to the East Coast, found in the West but never before definitively seen in Alaska. It was discovered Friday and has been delighting birdwatchers who have been flocking to Kenai from across the state since the sighting was confirmed.

Redoubt Reporter

Had Toby Burke been back East when he saw the long-beaked, long-legged shorebird sitting in the grass rimming a tidal pool along Boat Launch Road in Kenai on Friday morning, he wouldn’t have given it another look. But he was in Alaska, and once he realized what the bird might be, his eyes all but popped out of his head.

“There’s only been one previous sighting in Alaska, and it was unsubstantiated — never photographer or unequivocally proven — in August 1961 in the Minto Flats. So this one here is at least the first one that’s been documented, if not the first one that’s been seen in Alaska,” said Burke, a technician for the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

He’s speaking of a willet, a migratory shorebird in the sandpiper family common to the East Coast, known in the West, and extremely rare in Alaska.

“We’re about 1,500 miles from its closest breeding range, and they don’t tend to wander a whole lot to the far north like this,” Burke said.

He had been out conducting a survey of breeding birds on the estuary flats at the mouth of the Kenai River on Friday morning and figured he’d take a quick detour down Boat Launch Road off Bridge Access Road to see if anything interesting caught his eye. He glanced at the tidal pool near the road, since there’s usually at least a dowitcher or some other shorebird hanging out.

“I looked over and just on the edge of the grass I saw this bird that superficially looks like a greater yellowlegs, which is a local breeder here. But then I looked at it and went, ‘Wait a minute, that’s not a yellowlegs,’” he said.

Cat, debris fished from river — Funding enables Kenai watershed restoration projects

By Joseph Robertia

Photos by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Jerry Holly, with Soldotna-based Specialty Excavating, digs junk out of a jetty at mile 22.5 of the Kenai River on April 26, while Josh Holly, at left, inspects some of the debris up close.

Redoubt Reporter

When people think of the world-famous Kenai River, it is often a pristine image of sapphire blue waters bordered by a smooth-stoned shoreline that comes to mind, not a jetty made up of hulking pieces of rusty metal parts, as was the case at river mile 22.5 until two weeks ago.

“You could see Cat tracks and junk sticking out at low water. It didn’t look good,” said John Czarnezki, resource planner with the Kenai Peninsula Borough at the Donald E. Gilman River Center, who was the project manager overseeing recent cleanup efforts of this area just downstream of the center.

This was the first project of a much larger peninsulawide debris removal program utilizing Coastal Impact Assistance Program funding, as well as donations from federal, state and local conservation-related agencies and organizations. The program authorizes funds to be distributed to outer-continental-shelf oil- and gas-producing states, including Alaska, Alabama, California, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas — for the conservation, protection and preservation of wetlands.

“To determine how the funds should be used, we solicited comments from the public and

Remnants of D8 and D6 Cats were dug out of the river near the Donald E. Gilman River Center on Funny River Road.

various area agencies with working knowledge of rivers, streams and coastline conservation and management. We received 30 different project ideas and ranked them based on priority. This project on the Kenai River was actually the second-ranked project on the list,” Czarnezki said.

The highest-ranking project is currently the removal of a fence erected long ago by a homesteader that has, over the years, collapsed into Soldotna Creek, and now is partially blocking this waterway.

“Soldotna Creek is running very high from the spring melt-off, so we’re waiting for the water to drop a bit, but we anticipate getting in there in mid-May,” Czarnezki said.

Flood of risk trickles downstream — Close outlet of glacial-dammed lakes unusual but largely uneventful

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

A possible worst-case scenario — the Snow Glacier Lake flooding its contents into the Kenai River this week on the heels of the Skilak Glacier Lake also releasing — actually worked out to be the best-possible scenario for residents living in flood-prone areas downstream.

According to the National Weather Service Alaska-Pacific River Forecast Center in Anchorage, Skilak Glacier Lake released the week of Oct. 10, and forecasters announced Monday that the Snow Glacier Lake is draining into Kenai Lake this week. It’s unusual for the jokulhlaups — an Icelandic term meaning the release of a glacier-dammed lake — of the Skilak and Snow glaciers to happen so close together, and such an event could cause significant flooding concerns. But in this case, current conditions made for as uneventful a release of both lakes as possible.

“You couldn’t have planned it any better,” said Eric Mohrmann, director of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Office of Emergency Management.

The lakes — formed by meltwater and rain runoff accumulating behind the glaciers — release on a two-year cycle. The ice can only hold back so much water before the pressure becomes too much for the glacier to withstand.

“They need to fill to a certain level to form enough hydraulic head to actually sort of lift up the glacier that’s blocking it, and it starts to erode pipelines, basically, through the glacier for the water to start to slowly leak out,” said Ben Balk, a hydrologist with the river forecast center. “It finally just completely flushes and then the lake is empty so (the glacier resettles and the water release) just stops.”

Back to bears — Managers talk of options at Kenai, Russian River

SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/jennyneyman2/Desktop/11022011/stories%2011022011/jr%20Russian%20River%20bear%20options%2011022011(1).doc

By Joseph Robertia

Photo by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Brown bears compete over the resource that draws both bears and humans in droves to the Russian River-Kenai River confluence during the summer — sockeye salmon.

Redoubt Reporter

From the backdrop of the steep, timbered mountains, to viewing black and brown bears from just yards away, to salmon and trout fishing which ranks as some of the best in the world, the confluence of the Kenai and Russian rivers in many ways represents a quintessential Alaska experience.

The sparkling ideal is not without its smudges, though. As droves of locals and tourists crowd the area in summer, they often leave behind pounds of fish waste after cleaning their catches. This subsequently causes bears to linger longer as a result of the easily obtained meals, and when the two — fishermen and bruins — meet over the same resources the result is not always a good one.

Dozens of bears have been killed over the years, termed as defense of life and property shootings, and in 2003 and 2006 humans were mauled, including one severe attack that crushed an Anchorage man’s skull and left him blind.

Seeing a downward spiral as this area became more popular with each passing summer, managers from the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, Chugach National Forest and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game began implementing programs to minimize conflicts between humans and bears, and from 2009 to 2011 no bears were killed or humans injured.

Bolstered by this initial success, managers are attempting to make further improvements by developing a five-year action plan for the Kenai-Russian River Complex, and they have been seeking public input into the process. Last week meetings were held in Soldotna, Cooper Landing and Anchorage to glean insight into ways to make this area safer.

“We know additional efforts are needed,” said Bobbie Jo Skibo, Russian River interagency management coordinator, during the Soldotna meeting Oct. 25.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

To catch a Kenai king — Anglers netting more success so far in late run

By Joseph Robertia

Photos by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Dave Paulsen, of Sterling, waits for his guide, Jim Carter of Trophy King Lodge, to clean his catch — a toothy, 50-pound king salmon buck he landed Saturday in the Kenai River.

Redoubt Reporter

Thousands of miles away from her home in Rohn, Ga., 19-year-old Lauren Callahan was up at the crack of dawn Saturday morning, but excitement and anticipation kept her from feeling the effects of such an early rise.

She’s been coming to Alaska for several years now, and fishing for king salmon for the last two, but she has always gone home empty-handed. She had high hopes this year would be different.

Not long after taking to the water at 6 a.m. Saturday, she got her first bite. A small Dolly Varden hit the ball of bright red roe hiding a hook at the center. Since trout was not her target species, she quickly released the colorful fish.

The freckle-faced teen re-baited her hook and sent it back down into the fast-flowing, aquamarine water. Minutes went by, eventually turning into hours with no action. Callahan was starting to lose faith that she might see her most-coveted catch at the sharp end of her line.

There were dozens of other boats around her guided vessel, each with no less than four lines out. She had seen many people get bites, but few had been able to bring a king on board. It was about an hour before noon, floating past the Crossover Hole, that her luck finally changed.

“We were just talking when all of a sudden my reel took off,” she said.

Her spooling-out line was whining like a kid with revoked video-game privileges. Callahan snatched up the rod and began what became the biggest fish fight of her life.

“It felt like forever,” she said. “I’ve caught big halibut before, but never a salmon this size. My arms were killing me, and

halfway through the fight I worried I wouldn’t be able to keep reeling it in.”

Catch kings if you can — Fish and Game levies restrictions, changes reporting on early run info

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

To call up the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s informational recording giving the sonar count estimates of salmon returning to Cook Inlet rivers, or to look at the counts printed in the Peninsula Clarion newspaper, could give the impression that king salmon fishing has been hot and heavy in the Kenai River.

As of Friday, the early run king count in the Kenai was reported as a robust cumulative total of 9,172, which is thousands of fish ahead of the average estimate for this time of year.

Fish on, right?

Wrong — both the number and the impression it gives that fishing is good. Despite the rosy outlook such a high sonar estimate connotates, king fishing has been slow on the Kenai this spring.

“A friend on the river fished two days on the weekend. He fished hard and only saw one fish caught, and it was only about 10 pounds. It was just a desert out there. Nobody was catching anything, so it’s really poor,” said Dwight Kramer, a private angler and head of the Kenai Area Fisherman’s Coalition.

The run has been so poor, in fact, that Fish and Game imposed fishing restrictions Monday, which are in place today through July 14 covering the area from the Fish and Game regulatory marker 300 yards downstream from the mouth of Slikok Creek upstream to the outlet of Skilak Lake, and in the Moose River from its confluence with the Kenai River upstream to the northernmost edge of the Sterling Highway Bridge. Only kings less than 20 inches or more than 55 inches may be kept. Any kings between 20 and 55 inches must be released without removing them from the water. Bait is not allowed from today through July 14 in the restricted area noted above, but bait will be allowed starting Friday downstream of the Fish and Game regulatory marker near Slikok Creek.

Yet if the sonar estimate on the recording and in the paper is to be believed, the Kenai king run not only met, but also exceeded the escapement goal as of Friday.

Anglers waiting with baited breath, not hooks, for better Kenai king fishing

Editor’s note: For more information on king salmon sonar estimates, see next week’s paper.

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

Kenai River sportfishermen hoping to use bait to lure better results in the slow-going early run king salmon fishery will have to keep on waiting.

“The question, kind of the carrot that’s been hanging out there for this run, is, ‘Are we going to go to bait? Or, when are we going to go to bait?’ And the answer to that is we don’t anticipate doing that at this time,” said Robert Begich, upper Kenai Peninsula area management biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Sportfish Division.

It’s going to remain business as usual with anglers restricted to using just a single hook with no bait on the lower Kenai River until king salmon fish passage estimates pick up.

Or, rather, more like business as unusual, since this run is shaping up to be off the average.

“It’s looking like it’s going to come in OK, but it’s not a strong run,” Begich said.