King and chum salmon are still slowly building a run up the Yukon this summer—and fishermen are contending with everything from gear restrictions to wildland fires in their efforts to fill their racks.
During the weekly teleconference with fishermen and managers in the U.S. and Canada—organized by the nonprofit Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association—fisherman all along the river say Alaska’s intense fire season is definitely hampering their season—turning an afternoon boating on the river into choking day in a smoke-filled oven.
Basil: “In the high 90s here, thick smoke.”
Norma: “The Marshall boys, the firefighters, are still out at the Card Street fire, so a lot of our subsistence activities were lower than in previous weeks.
Fred: Fred Huntington in Galena, lots of forest fires.
Ellis Wright in Ruby: There’s a lot of fires in our area, so its pretty smoky.”
The fires may have hindered fishing, but they haven’t stopped the fish. The first pulse of Chinook was in the river in early June—and is now as far upriver as Koyukuk—but overall the numbers remain low: roughly 13-thousand fewer kings have passed the Pilot Station Sonar project near the river’s mouth when compared to this time last year.
It’s a different story for summer chums: they also began running just a week into June, and now two pulses have made it as far upriver as Holy Cross. But compared to last year, there are nearly 20-thousand more chums are in the water now.
Even with hundreds of thousands of chums swimming alongside thousands of Chinook, runs are still just average, and that means gear is still limited to dipnets, beach seines, and the occasional live-release fish wheel. An unfamiliar tool for many on the Yukon, dipnets have been for the most part ineffective—and many fishermen hoping to user smaller 4-inch mesh nets say they simply can’t get that gear in their communities. That’s turned what should be a busy summer along the river into a slow and frustrating season with little fishing.
“Yeah this is Sven with the tribe in St .Mary’s. Reports are people haven’t been able to get most of their ,or a lot of their, subsistence needs done.
Martin: This is Martin, very little subsistence activity, most racks riverfront have a few salmon hanging, we should be usually with hanging and drying salmon in Pilot.
Ken Chase in Anvik, subsistence fishing for salmon right now is just about nil, there’s no, no one out fishing.
Bill in St. Mary’s: This dipnet fishing, for subsistence, it ain’t, it just ain’t workin’ out.”
While subsistence has been slow, commercial chum fishing was open in the lower river with dip nets and beach seine gear. As of Sunday, commercial harvested almost 62,000 chums and released over 3,000 Chinooks. Sven in St. Mary’s says the gear limit—and overlap—should be reason enough to allow for a ‘round-the-clock opening for subsistence.
“Since we are doing subsistence and commercial at the same time, what are the chances having subsistence going 24/7. With the little amount of fish in the river, and people still have to meet their subsistence needs, imagine it should give them more chance for subsistence opportunity for these fishermen here, just to give folks a chance to have their subsistence needs taken care of.”
Fish and Game managers say that’s not likely: they say they are already holding subsistence-only openings in the morning prior to the subsistence and commercial openings in the afternoon and evening. They may open it up for subsistence-only in the lower river, but for now, limited chum salmon openings continue. New openings near Ruby and Galena are expected later this week—and only dip nets, beach seines, and fish wheels will be allowed.
Stepehanie Schmidt—the Summer Season Fishery Manager along the Yukon for Fish and Game—says strong winds are pushing more fish into the mouth of the Yukon, and test catches near the mouth Tuesday saw large numbers of both species. She hopes that means more fish—and more chances for subsistence users to finally start putting away enough of them for the winter.
“You know, one day makes all the difference. It now looks as though we’ve got a really, really good group of both summer chum and Chinook salmon moving into the river currently … And we’re gonna try and get folks fishing on those summer chum salmon when they’re there in abundance and there’s relatively low numbers of Chinook salmon.”
But what does that goal *really mean for people living on the river? One fishermen admitted on the teleconference—with a mix of pride and remorse—to sharing a small feast of just one prized Chinook with his fellow elders, saying the group of five “ate that king salmon, kind of like a ceremonial prayer” — likely the only king salmon they’d harvest this season, he added.
For Janet in Rampart, that spiritual connection to the Chinook is what’s being lost with the king closures—and it’s something she fears will be lost to new generations if they can’t harvest the sacred fish.
Janet: “We’ve been doing due diligence of trying to preserve the king salmon. And we keep saying “for our grandchildren,” but when you think about it, our grandchildren are not even getting … or we’re depriving them of eating king salmon … of the taste of such a wonderful food … then how are they even going know?
If the tight conservation on kings continues, Schmidt says they’ll be on track to meet escapement goals for Chinook this year. And that *could mean very limited openings for incidental take of kings. That’ll help fishermen meet subsistence needs without a significant impact to the Chinook population—but Schmidt says no decisions has yet been made.
Matthew Smith is a reporter at KNOM in Nome.
