Even when things are bad, it’s good to be a commercial fisherman in Alaska. In the fat years, salmon fill the nets, and they haul in boatloads of cash. And in the […]
Semi-annual bailouts
Dividing the baby
Alaska’s Kenai River is today a textbook example of the problems of managing mixed-stock fisheries right down to commercial set gillnetters protesting they catch comparatively few of the weak stock. The weak […]
Simple solution
The third rock from the sun in the Milky Way galaxy is a planet in a constant state of change inhabited by lifeforms that either adapt or perish. Yes, we’re talking here […]
Vital overreach
After years of Alaska politicians complaining about “federal overreach” in the 49th state, one legislator is now arguing that it is vital in Cook Inlet, the waterway that cuts into the heart […]
Warming winner
The Alaska Arctic appears to be home to global-warming winner familiar to almost everyone in the 49th state: pink salmon. Impossible to miss for those fishing in the “Top of the World” […]
Bounty Bay
The sockeye salmon came late to Alaska’s Bristol Bay this year, but now look on track to exceed an Alaska Department of Fish and Game forecast that called for a harvest of […]
No truce
Not even the dreaded coronavirus COVID-19 seems able stop the fish wars that have long roiled the waters of Alaska’s Cook Inlet. Where some today see a pandemic spreading disease, death and […]
Management mythology
In the strange, pandemic world of today, one of the unintended victims of the coronavirus COVID-19 could be the regularly and often loudly stated danger of “over-escapement” of salmon into Alaska streams […]
Salmon fantasies
Despite a decade-long, average commercial harvest of only about 2.6 million Upper Cook Inlet sockeye salmon, the dream of a scaly silver bounty lives on among the approximately 1,000 Alaskans who own […]
Fish more
Reading through the 260-page, 9/16th-inch thick Alaska Board of Fisheries Proposal Book published by the state, it is clear the one thing Cook Inlet commercial fishermen want most is more fishing time. […]
