The world's Greatest Salmon

 Well....It went from an emergency to a ' stock of concern ' to a total closure and then to this...

only 6,630 Kenai Kings over the sonar by the time the counts stopped being published by the ADF+G on August 20th. The counts used to end when the sport harvest stopped on July 31, then it would stop when the commercial harvest end on August 15, then it was decided that every fish counted so why not let the sonar run until August 31....well, there's no fish...if you don't like the numbers just quit counting I guess but it doesn't take away from the fact that people need and deserve the information, they need to know how bad the situation is.  The black line represents this year , the worst run in History, maybe not even enough fish to sustain the run. the other climbing lines represent the last few years and the flat red line represents the desired sonar counts and the very top line represents the good ol days.

I have some observations. And if any of you say to yourselves ' ol Jeff there ain't got a dog in the hunt '  or why's he always so critical ....well....I owe this everything and invested my entire adult life in it.....so here goes whether you like it or not. But first here's the one on my wall, my reminder , my talisman , my wonderful memories.

The first step in problem solving is to admit you have a problem.

When you're in a hole quit digging ! Does it really make sense to anybody that with ALL (or at least most ) of the local harvest fisheries closed to experiment with a new gear type ? A new commercial fishery . Yup, ADF+G gave permission to an influential commercial fisherman to experiment this year with a beach seine because the theory is King Salmon can be released from this type of gear....HOW ARE YOU GOING TO RELEASE SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T EXIST ....unless this beach seine can somehow create more salmon what in the hell are we doing ?

There is a management line that runs east and west across lower Cook Inlet. To the south King Harvest is allowed, to the north it's not.....well...the salmon can't see that line. 

Cook Inlet and Kodiak  salmon share an area that the young fish would / will transit on their way to feeding grounds. The Shelikof Strait is Trawled by factory boats from Seattle and worked with Seine nets for salmon by the Kodiak fleet. Here's the same graph info for Kodiak's Karluk River which has had robust King and Silver runs for decades. Unlike the Kenai the fish are enumerated by a weir where they are seen and counted by humans, there is no degree of doubt with accuracy as is sometimes a question with sonar enumeration....this year the Karluk King Salmon return is 75 fish....75 !

It's clearly code red . In one short year the Kenai run was cut in half and the Karluk run has disappeared . If this were to repeat in 2025 we might easily be beyond recovery, not sustainable and maybe even not enough fish for an egg take to save the genetics by hatchery. It's obviously to big for ADF+G to handle locally, there'e no shame in calling in the cavalry. Get everyone on board. use the Endangered Species Act. And until we get this sorted out stop ALL harvest, bycatch , directed fisheries etc....

And now the one that everyone is gonna role up their eyes and moan over. The Homer Winter King Derby . Somewhere somebody somehow r ADF+G came to the conclusion that these immature King Salmon are not local fish and mostly of Canadian origen. I could go on and on about this but I'll save you all from that and make  it simple...This doesn't pass the ' common sense test ' ...  The Homer Chamber of Commerce loves this event as well as the winter fishery in general. STOP IT, you're contributing to the demise of the greatest salmon ever in the world .