newsminer.com

FAIRBANKS — Chitina dip-netters won’t get to keep any more king or red salmon in the Copper River personal-use fishery next season.

The Board of Fisheries didn’t make any significant changes in the popular personal-use fishery during a week-long meeting that concluded Sunday in Cordova, rejecting proposals from the Fairbanks Fish and Game Advisory Committee and Chitina Dipnetters Association to increase the number of king and red salmon that dip-netters could keep, while at the same time restricting commercial fishermen in Cordova from fishing until at least 5,000 fish had passed a sonar counter at Miles Lake, 70 miles from the mouth of the Copper River.

“Nothing changed in the personal-use fishery, nothing changed in the subsistence fishery and nothing changed in the lower Copper River commercial fishery,” summed up area biologist Mark Somerville with the Department of Fish and Game in Glennallen.

The biggest change to come out of the meeting as far as local anglers are concerned was that the Fish Board extended the king salmon fishing season on the Klutina River 10 days to Aug. 10. The extension did come with a price, however, in that the season will not open until July 1. Previously, king salmon fishing was allowed in June.

Concern for the health of early season king runs throughout the Copper River drainage persuaded the Division of Sport Fish to recommend a July 1 opening, said regional management coordinator Tom Taube with the Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks.

Fishing effort on the Klutina is much higher later in the season than it is early in the season, which may result in a slight increase in harvest with a Aug. 10 closure, but closing the season in June will ensure that early run kings reach the spawning grounds, Taube said. Anglers usually catch between 1,200 to 2,000 kings a summer on the Klutina, and Taube doesn’t expect that to change much with an Aug. 10 closure.

“It’s probably going to stay about the same,” he said. “If it increases dramatically we’ll probably come back to it.”

The later opening pertains only to the lower Klutina, from Mile 13 downstream to the Copper River. The season in the upper river from Klutina Lake to Mile 19 will be July 1 to July 19 and fishing in the middle portion of the river from Mile 19 to Mile 13 will be open from July 1 to July 31.

The Klutina River Guides Association, with the backing of advisory committees from Fairbanks, Anchorage and the Mat-Su Valley, submitted a proposal to allow king fishing in June but without the use of bait. Bait would have been allowed in July but not in August, according to Daryl Olson, president of the Klutina River Guides Association.

“(Prohibiting the use of bait) probably would have lowered the take more than what they did,” Olson, of Fairbanks, said.

But Taube said bait restrictions for parts of the season are confusing to anglers and the department preferred an across-the-board regulation.

Guides will lose about three to five days of fishing under the new regulations, but there should be more fish to catch in August than June, Olson said.

“We can live with it,” he said of the new regulation prohibiting fishing for kings in June but extending the season to Aug. 10.

The Aug. 10 extension also applies to the Tonsina River downstream from where the trans-Alaska oil pipeline crosses the river. The season for the upper river will be July 1-19. Taube said he doesn’t expect much of an increase in king harvest in the Tonsina because access is so limited.

Another new rule that salmon anglers on Copper River tributaries such as the Gulkana and Klutina rivers will have to get used to deals with releasing salmon. In what was considered a surprise, the board adopted a new regulation that prohibits the removal from the water of any salmon before releasing the fish. Any salmon that is removed from the water becomes part of the bag limit of the angler who caught and must be retained.

There was already a regulation on the books prohibiting the removal of king salmon from the water when releasing them but the new regulation applies to red and silver salmon, too, Taube said.

That means anglers won’t be able to drag fish on to the bank before releasing them, a practice that Olson said is common on the Klutina River, which is one of the reasons the Klutina River Guides Association proposed it. Neither will anglers be able to remove fish from the water to take photos or fish steep cutbanks where dragging a fish ashore is a necessity, said Somerville. It will also make releasing a snagged fish much more difficult, he said.

“If you hook a fish in the tail and drag it part way up the beach, you’re going to get a ticket,” he said.

That is, assuming you get caught. Much of the debate over passing the new regulation centered on enforcement capabilities, Olson said.

Said Somerville, “It’s going to be a big enforcement issue.”

In other action of interest to Interior anglers who fish in the Copper River Valley, the Fish Board:

• Closed the Slana River, Sinona Creek and Lakina Creek to king salmon fishing. The first two streams are in the upper Copper River and Lakina Creek is in the Chitina River drainage. All three have small runs of king salmon. Fishing was also closed for a quarter mile around the mouth of each stream.

• Prohibited king salmon fishing a quarter mile around the mouth of Manker Creek, a tributary of the Klutina River.

• Opened Crosswind Lake

to subsistence fishing, which

Taube said might prompt a

few more people to pick up whitefish permits.

• Found a customary and traditional use finding for fresh water fish in Upper Copper River and set the amounts necessary for subsistence between 25,000 and 42,000 pounds of fish.

“I don’t see a lot of people taking advantage of that,” Taube said, adding that the department has issued permits for fishermen to catch the same fish in past years and the new regulation is simply a “formality.”

The same regulations apply to the subsistence fisheries as apply to the sport fisheries in those lakes, Taube said. For example, permits are not issued for rainbow trout in the Gulkana River because it’s illegal to retain rainbow trout in the Gulkana.