The Alaska Department of Fish and Game made a revision to a recent emergency order regarding the personal use gillnet fishery for the Kasilof River. In hopes of conserving king salmon, the set gillnet fishery hours have been reduced an additional six hours per day. The fishery will be open from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily from Wednesday, June 15 through Friday, June 24. This restriction in hours supersedes a previous Emergency Order that was issued on June 8, which reduced daily fishing hours from 17-hours to 12-hours per day.
Colton Lipka, Area Management Biologist for the Division of Sport Fish tells KSRM:
“The previous Emergency Order was established based on the king assessment and restrictions that were in place at that time where we still had some uncertainty in the run size and restrictions that were in place were, we still had sportfishing opportunity on the Kasilof, so once we got further into the run and we were able to identify how small these king runs were, that was the next round of restrictions. Having the setnet fishery at 12 hours was seen as a little too much opportunity to kill kings and we needed to bring that back to the six hours a day, which will allow for an opportunity to harvest some sockeye while reducing the king harvest.”
Lipka does have some good news:
“So, we have started to pass fish through the Russian River weir. We’re up to a cumulative escapement of 455, with yesterday’s number. So, if they’re getting to the weir, that means that they’ve been through the fishery. Based off the fish movement we saw; I would anticipate that we’ll have some pretty good fishing available coming up on Friday/Saturday this weekend. It might be a good time to head up to the Russian and give that a try if they don’t want to drive over to Seward or if they just want to go fish in the clear water for a change.”
ADF&G manages Kasilof River early run king salmon to achieve a sustainable escapement goal of 700-1,400 naturally produced king salmon. This gillnet fishery is in conjunction with the Upper Cook Inlet personal use fisheries on the Kenai, Kasilof, and Susitna rivers, and Fish Creek.
Click here for the latest emergency orders and advisory announcements pertaining to the Northern Kenai from the Division of Sport Fish.
