Hunting & Fishing

There’s a new fishing permit on the Kuskokwim River that, for the first time, will allow fishermen to harvest king salmon in the upper Kuskokwim during closures.

The village of Akiak’s proposal to move federal management of the lower Kuskokwim River to earlier in the season failed to get the nod from the Federal Subsistence Board on Wednesday. With even fewer kings expected up the river this summer, the Board has assured that co-management on the lower Kuskokwim will proceed much as it has in prior years and turned down Akiak’s plan to start federal management in May. 

This year, as in previous years, the Kuskokwim River drainage will close to sport fishing for king salmon. The earlier closures were prompted by low king numbers. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game predicts another low return of king salmon along the river and is issuing regulations to conserve the species.

Management of the Kuskowkim salmon fishery will look much the same as last year, according to plans unveiled by fishery managers at a meeting this week in Anchorage. The early closure to help kings swimming to the spawning waters are still in place, but the Kuskokwim Salmon Management Working Group recommends starting the rolling closures five days later. The idea is to begin them in the Lower Kuskokwim Sections 1 and 2 on May 25 instead of May 20. That would push the closure in Section 3 to May 30, Section 4 to June 4, and the closure in Section 5 would be on June 9.

You could have heard a gasp when it became clear at an Anchorage meeting on Wednesday that the state’s new tool to help manage king salmon on the Kuskokwim River, a special subsistence king salmon permit, would be available in Anchorage. The plan has some of the river’s residents worried that it would destroy years of sacrifice to get more fish to spawning grounds.

Kuskokwim residents are largely giving their support to another summer of fishing restrictions, but they want to see some things about last year’s conservation measures changed.