Fishing

State announces more king salmon fishing bans on Western Alaska rivers

More Western Alaska waterways, facing shrinking returns, will be closed to fishing for king salmon.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game on Thursday announced an array of Northwest rivers, including the Koyuk, Ungalik, Inglutalik, Shaktoolik, Unalakleet and Golsovia, will close to sport and subsistence fishing June 8.

Fishing for chinook will be banned from Point Romanof to Black Point in the fresh water of those drainages and marine waters just offshore.

The Unalakleet River has met its escapement goal of at least 1,200 kings only three times in the last decade.

"The department does not have escapement goals for king salmon in the Koyuk, Ungalik, Inglutalik, Shaktoolik or Golsovia rivers," wrote management biologist Brendan Scanlon in a press release. "But there is no indication that king salmon runs in southern Norton Sound are going to be better than those in other Western Alaska drainages such as the Yukon and Kuskokwim river drainages, both of which have already been closed to sport fishing for king salmon."

The Yukon River king return, however, has shown some improvement in recent years, with the number of kings counted at Pilot Station, 121 miles upstream from the river mouth, increasing 30 percent since 2012 to more than 138,000 fish -- but only with all fishing for kings shut down. And that's still far from such large returns as the 268,000 Yukon kings counted in 2003.

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