The winter meeting of the Alaska Board of Fisheries is months away but already the weirdness has begun. At a work session in Kenai-Soldotna this week, the board spent some time kicking […]
Counting big salmon
Once more the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is suggesting a lowering of the spawning goal for late-run Kenai River king salmon, the most revered fish in Alaska. The last time […]
Netting Alaska’s spoils
The most fought-over commodity in Cook Inlet/Craig Medred photo Fifty years ago with runs of most Cook Inlet salmon failing, every fisherman – commercial, subsistence and sport – paid the price of […]
Alaska’s greatest gift, Pt. 2
This is part two of a four part series: the fall and rise of Alaska fisheries. For those who came of age or arrived in Alaska after the start of the new […]
Alaska’s greatest gift, Pt. 1
This is the first part of a four part series : Fishing, a very special business. Forty-four years ago, average Alaskans voted one of the state’s most powerful special interest groups a […]
Kenai fish fight
After Kenai River personal use dipnetters struggled through an often slow July trying to catch their winter supply of sockeye salmon, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game refused to grant them […]
Salmon dipnet hurrah!
MOUTH OF THE KENAI RIVER – After a 36-hour respite from commercial fishing offshore in Cook Inlet, the sockeye salmon flowed steadily along the beaches here on Wednesday. The fishing was not […]
The money fish
New economic data might make Alaskans want to think twice about cursing those fish-filled coolers soon to start passing through Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage. Tourists appear willing to pump a […]
The dying Kenai kings
UPDATED – May 20, 2016 Seven out of every 11 Kenai River late-run king salmon killed last year died in gillnets as what was once the most valuable sport fishery in Alaska […]
Kenai subsistence challenged
A federal agency wants to end a tiny subsistence, gillnet salmon fishery in the Kenai River for almost the exact same reason — bycatch — that more than 43,000 Alaskans in […]
