Lets go Fishing....w/ update tuesday june 10th 5 pm

This last weekend was the 24th annual Kenai River Festival put on by the Watershed Forum which is a science based non profit I have supported for years. The event is a typical mix of Alaska life. It's purpose is to inform and celebrate about the importance of our river while listening to good home made music, eating vendors food ( I had Cajun Okra ) dodging every politician in town and the inevitable smattering of fish politics.

MP was working the ' Kid Zone' for The Friends of the Library and I rode my bike over to meet her at the end of her shift and festival a bit and then ride home....well the coolest thing happened as I got close to her both. I noticed a crowd around the table where the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game does salmon dissection classes for the kids. Well, guess who was expertly filleting fish and showing the kids sockeye salmon identification? Yup, my favorite person. And oh, we had fresh sockeye for supper.

Our friend Patty Berkhahn (yes, I have friends at ADF+G) run the dissections every year at the Festival. Alaska kids are something, they have their hands in the blood and pick up entrails to ask questions as Patty points out the function of each organ,I even learned something...I learned that the blood line is the fishes kidneys which processes what it takes in and actually produces urine. For years I've told people it was their central nervous system....ooops....

When ADF+G summarily closed the river this year for early Kings before the season even started based only on their 'predictions' I told people to hide and watch...this thing wouldn't play out like the experts think, around the Kenai River nothing seldom does. So here is the graph of how the numbers are tracking in 2014  when we were predicted to be worse than 2013. You can see that every year all the lines trend upwards so just draw that line in your mind and if you're like me, you're left feeling a bit perplexed.

The red line is 2014, the black 2013 and the others 2010 thru 2012.   Of course our red line flattens out because we are only 22% of the way into the run. We're certainly WAY ahead of last year and close to the previous years, years where we fished....you know, had a normal life here on the Kenai before Chicken Little arrived. I've said all along that there is no rational reason sports people were denied opportunity to be fishing catch and release this year from the very start. It  would have lead to one of three scenarios. We'd have C+R until we had enough fish in to allow for harvest. We'd have had just enough to C+R all season or the worst would happen and we would be shut down for the importance of every single spawner, ( at which time I would assume all harvest would be stopped).

But you see none of those things happened because ADF+G can see the future. When you consider these things...
1. Every fisheries expert in the world would tell you that catch and release fishing is a widely accepted management tool and can hurt NOTHING...In fact for years we were told that our CPUE (catch per unit of effort) was  valuable data set for ADF+G.
2. Harvest of these same Kings is being allowed in the ocean just down the coast a few miles.
3. Right now we have 3 times as many Kings in the river as on this date last year...
4. The early run was closed in March, 2 months before the first fish arrive.
5. Everyone knows that guide business's work on schedule. I suppose there were those in
ADF+G that mistakenly  thought by closing it before it even starts they were helping a guide business out of the awkwardness of in season closures...They're just flat wrong, it's created confusion and damage that will last for years. How about letting the business people worry about the business considerations and you guys do what ever it is that you do ?

When the folks at ADF+G got their Ouija Board out and looked into the future all that happened was terrible harm to every small business in the community that depends on this fishery.  So when I get the crystal ball out and look into the future I hear a voice " don't try to predict the future, it's impossible and if it weren't  you guys wouldn't be any good at it anyway"....

Tomorrow the last few days of data will be released, should be interesting. I expect the run to continue to build, I also expect that it will meet escapement but still, there's not a lot of fish and we are certainly experiencing low abundance. But, there are certainly enough fish that we can get up early and drink warm coffee as we work through the chill of the morning. There's just a trace of fog on the river when port side rod goes off with a 30 pounder holding firm to a chartreuse K-15 with a single barbless hook. With adrenaline pumping and with admiration and respect we fight him into the net, release his hook and return him to the wild unharmed....we've tricked another one....that's what sportsmen do, that's what we do....Lets end this management of spite, misinformation , anger and blame over reason and go fishing, lets go fishing.  

Yesterday I knew I was taking a chance by writing negative about ADF+G as the counts may have not increased and I'd look like I didn't know what I was talking about....well....I took the chance because I was sure it would turn out like this, here it is. We had several 2 and 3 hundred fish days to put us WAY ahead of the prediction and safely headed to at the very least the low end of the escapement range of 5300-9000. There was a day that guys like me were given some credit, our observations counted. We had an area Biologist named Steve Hammerstrom, he'd call every so often and ask what I was seeing, how it seemed to me....Steve respected the fact that I've sat through days and days of meeting, spent thousands of hours learning the salmon, the jargon, the biology of my passion. But what can I say about the guys here when they've also announced today that no management changes are planned.

So here's a quick synopsis for you guys at the Dept, I'll keep it simple so you can keep up....All salmon runs when charted make a bell shaped graph.  They slowly build to a peak and then slowly fall off. This run is still building to a traditional peak around mid month, to your figuring it's  33% in. So follow that little red line and you'll see that it's pointing right at about 7,575 fish line. Which if 5300 is just barely enough and 9000 is way enough then that figure in the middle might be just right....ya know, kinda like when you test the bath tub water before you get in....too cold is no good and too hot is uncomfortable but nice and warm is just right. Got it?  So, now it's time to allow fishing opportunity , I heard somewhere that's the mission of ADF+G Sportfish Division....some of us would like to go sportfishing with catch and release only like has been done here many times before. I promise it will hurt nothing on the Kenai River and I'll quit writing about you. I promise.