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A fishing pole bends double and a moment later, sunlight glints off the flank of an airborne Kenai River trout. The silver-sided fish contrasts with the yellow leaves of the riverbank trees, the green-gray water and snow-capped Kenai Mountains in the distance.
There's no question the fish is large, clearly longer than 2 feet. There's no question this jumper is feisty. But there is a question of identity. Is this one of the beefy rainbow trout that have helped build the Kenai's reputation as one of North America's premier rainbow trout fisheries? Or is it one of the few sea-run steelhead that return to several Kenai Peninsula streams each year? For years, anglers, guides and biologists have debated whether the powerful Kenai River receives a steelhead run, or if the big trout that delight anglers are freshwater fish moving between the river and Skilak or Kenai lakes. "There are steelhead in the Kenai River," asserts Robert Begich, area management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. "It's not as much a mystery as people are sometimes led to believe. Like never before, more and more anglers are fishing the Kenai's shoulder season, and that's where they show up." Begich isn't the only one with that opinion. "Most definitely steelhead," said Scott Sager of Drifting On The Fly guide service. "I know so. I've caught a lot of them and it's 100 percent they're steelhead." "It's a huge debate on whether they're in there," added Orlando Gonzales of the Kenai River guide service Alaska On The Fly. "I've been catching a lot of rainbows in river that resemble steelhead. They have sea lice on them in middle part of the river. I fish for steelhead all the time, so I know what I'm looking for." An absolute test to determine whether or not the fish are steelhead measures marine nutrients in the fish's ear bones, Begich said. "That test is too costly, and we know that they're here," Begich said. But, he added, there's no way to determine how many steelhead the 82-mile long Kenai River supports. Fish and Game's Web site notes that stocked steelhead led to a small return in Crooked Creek, a Kasilof River tributary, in the 1980s. "This stocking program," the Web site says, "has been discontinued due to straying of stocked fish into the Kenai River." For years, counting steelhead in Kenai Peninsula streams that represent the northern boundary of the species has been mostly guesswork. The Anchor River north of Homer is one of the Peninsula streams with a fish-counting weir, but for budgetary reasons it is removed in early September after the silver salmon run ends. But this year, state biologists counted steelhead leaving the Anchor in the spring. Those results, the first solid Southcentral steelhead population numbers in years, are due soon. Nicky Szarzi, a Fish and Game area management biologist in Homer, expects the number will fall between 1,000 and 1,500 fish -- considerably less than the 4,000 steelhead estimated to be in the Anchor decades ago. State regulations are designed to protect them. In the upper Kenai River, only one rainbow or steelhead less than 16 inches may be taken per day. In the lower Kenai, the size limit is 18 inches. In other Peninsula streams such as Deep Creek and the Anchor River, any steelhead must be released and cannot be removed from the water. Even with those protections, some steelhead fall victim to anglers who cannot distinguish between silvery steelhead fresh from the ocean and silver salmon. (A key distinction is that steelhead have eight to 12 rays in their anal fin.) Typically, though, the silver run peaks in August while steelhead show up later, arriving as late as November. Still, there's overlap. "You can't believe some of the things I've witnessed on the river," Brian Emard, owner of Anchor River Lodge, said last year. "Species identification is a constant problem. I've seen more than one fisherman leaving the river with a steelhead, totally clueless as to what he was doing" said Emard, who earned a degree in wildlife biology from the University of New Hampshire and is a retired Delta Air Lines pilot. "And I've seen numerous beautiful steelheads floating down the river belly up after being mishandled by a careless or reckless fisherman." Typically, steelhead are sleeker than rainbows and silvery -- without spots below the lateral line. On the other hand, rainbows tend to be darker with rouge coloring and, according to Sager, piscatorial couch potatoes, content to lay in holes and gorge on salmon eggs. "Overweight, dying of heart attacks and way out of shape," he joked. Steelhead, on the other hand, are moving into freshwater in preparation for spawning in early spring. "They're definitely scarce," said Ben Collier of Trophy Drifters, who's fished the Kenai and Anchor rivers nearly a decade. "It's one of those things, you've got to be pretty lucky. You've got to willing to brave that winter because steelhead are best in late fall -- late October into mid-November. And that can be chilly." As real steelhead fishing ought to be.