Public Media for Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta

Fishery managers want to review harvest information from June 16 gillnet opening before allowing more fishing on lower Kuskokwim River

A gillnet drifts in the lower waters of the Kuskokwim River during a subsistence fishing opening on June 12, 2018.
Katie Basile

No gillnet openings have been announced for the lower Kuskokwim River after the opening on June 16. The 12-hour opening runs from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. from the river’s mouth, upstream to Aniak. The waters upstream of Aniak opened to gillnets full-time on June 12.

Gillnets are restricted to 6-inch or less mesh, 45 meshes in depth, and may not exceed 150 feet in length upstream of the Johnson River and 300 feet in length downstream of the Johnson River.

Federal and Tribal managers from the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge and the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission will meet on June 17 at 5 p.m. to consider scheduling a future gillnet opening. At a state salmon advisory meeting on June 15, refuge manager Boyd Blihovde said that they first want to review the harvest numbers from the June 16 opening before scheduling another one.

Also at their upcoming meeting, Blihovde said that the managers will consider whether to open the Kuskokwim waters upstream of the Kalskag Bluffs to gillnets full-time, and whether to allow retention of king salmon caught by hook and line at the Aniak River mouth. State managers said that they will also consider these same proposals after the June 16 gillnet opening.

Harvest information from the previous gillnet opening on June 12 estimates that 5,120 salmon were taken from the lower Kuskokwim from Tuntutuliak upstream to Akiak. That includes an estimated 4,700 Chinook, 360 sockeye, and 60 chum.

Alaska Department of Fish and Game fishery biologist Sean Larson said that if Chinook have an average run time, then 14% of Chinook would have passed Bethel as of June 13.

“And similar to last week, we’re seeing almost exclusively king salmon at the Bethel Test Fishery. There was one day where we picked up a couple of chum salmon,” Larson said.

No chum have been detected at the state sonar site near Bethel. But Larson said that that during an average run time, only 1% of chum would have passed Bethel at this point in the season. Chum runs have arrived late in recent years.

“So all we can say is that the early trickle of chum is smaller than what we’re used to seeing,” Larson said.

It’s a similar beginning to last year's chum run in the Kuskokwim, which was the lowest on record.

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Anna Rose MacArthur served as KYUK's News Director from 2015-2022.