Deshka River kings rebound
Summer flotillas appear in force as river regains heyday status

By CRAIG MEDRED
Daily News outdoors editor

The brothers Jones – Michael from Sutton and Kenneth from Bellingham, Wash. – anchored the quintessential Deshka king salmon boat in the mouth of the river last spring.

The Miss Eugenia cost nothing, Michael said. It looked it. An old, homemade, plywood speed boat about 18 feet long, Miss Eugenia had been fiberglassed over to keep her from leaking and then painted with white automotive paint.

Off her stern hung a 20-horsepower Johnson outboard so old Michael couldn’t even guess its age. When it ran, which was not too often, Michael had to keep the cowling off so he could tinker with the fuel system. Otherwise, the engine would quit.

This is the life of Deshka king salmon addicts.

The Jones brothers got hooked after a crazy 1998 journey in a cheap inflatable boat downstream on the Susitna River to what once was – and may yet again be – the top-producing king salmon tributary in the Susitna drainage.

A semi-wilderness tributary to the north side of the Susitna River about six miles downstream from Deshka Landing near Willow, the Deshka attracts all sorts of adventurers looking to get away from the crowds along the state’s road-accessible salmon streams.

They leave the crowds there to join the crowd here in a huge raft of boats behind which dangle hundreds of diving plugs such as Wiggle Warts, Hot Shots and Rattlin’ Fat Raps or some other version of a deep-water, wobbling plug. Since bait was banned on the Deshka, these have become the idiot-proof lure of choice.

Fishing them is simple: Cast or float the lure 50- to 100-feet behind the boat, tighten the line to make the plug dive, and then just sit back and hold onto the rod while the current forces the plug to the bottom and starts it wobbling in wait for an upstream bound king salmon.

In the heydays of the Deshka River king salmon fishery a decade ago – back when anglers were catching 5,000 to 6,000 fish per year here – another 25,000 to 30,000 kings would get through the gantlet of boats blocking the mouth to make their way far upstream to spawn.

No one is sure what happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said area management biologist Dave Rutz, but those runs crashed. The prime theory now being studied is hot water.

Biologists suspect some hot summers that raised Deshka water temperatures into the 70s might have cooked young king salmon in the stream. Early research on the theory looks promising. Work done at a state hatchery indicates that as water temperatures rise king salmon survival plummets, said Rutz, who spent years looking for a link between the king salmon crash and northern pike.

What he found, instead, was that pike illegally introduced in Susitna Valley waters have decimated some silver salmon populations, but appear to be little threat to the kings.

The vulnerable young kings occupy a different habitat than pike for most of the year, keeping predation minimal, he said.

Other theories on what happened to the missing Deshka kings have also been ruled out or discounted.

Offshore interceptions may have played a role, Rutz said, but probably not a major one, given that other Susitna Valley king runs did not decline nearly so much.

Overfishing at the mouth of the river might have compounded the weakness of some runs, he said, but didn’t cause it.

Whatever the cause, everyone appears happy the kings are back. Last year, with the Susitna running low and the Deshka running high, the mixing zone for the iron-colored water of one river and the glacial silt of the other moved down to just below the Deshka Silver King Lodge, offering special entertainment for lodge owners Bill and Susan Jarvis.

"There were a zillion people," Susan said, after an early June weekend.

"But they were really well-behaved. People seem appreciative. We worked hard to get this fishery back, and people seem to have the attitude of ‘don’t abuse it.’"

She has seen anglers get on their cellular phones to call Alaska Fish and Wildlife Protection in Palmer when they see other anglers fishing illegally.

"There’s a real good attitude," she said, "and we’ve seen a lot of fish taken. We saw some big ones, too."

Deshka anglers occasionally land 50- and 60-pound king salmon, but 20- and 30-pounders are more common. That’s small by Kenai River standards, but who can complain?

"This is fun," said Michael O’Reilly as he trooped back to the lodge, grabbed his gear and prepared to dash off to catch a floatplane ferrying him back to Anchorage. "I don’t want to go. I want to stay right here."

Another Deshka addict appeared to have been hooked.

Brothers Michael and Kenneth Jones fish from the "Miss Eugenia" at the Deshka River. (BILL ROTH / Anchorage Daily News)