BETHEL -- Kuskokwim River commercial fishermen will have their first chance of summer to make a little cash during openings set for Monday.
Fishermen on the Western Alaska river will target silver salmon in the openings. One is scheduled from noon to 6 p.m. from regulatory river markers at Bethel to markers about 15 miles downstream of the Johnson River, according to the state Department of Fish and Game. A lower section of the river extending from the markers downstream of the Johnson to near the river mouth at the southernmost tip of Eek Island will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Fish and Game announced.
Subsistence salmon fishing on the Kuskokwim will be closed from the upper end of Straight Slough to the area near Eek Island from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday.
The Kuskokwim River Salmon Management Working Group, an advisory panel that includes an assortment of fishing interests, met Saturday and recommended a commercial opening.
Numbers of silver, or coho, salmon being caught in the Fish and Game test fishery near Bethel have been rising in recent days. Other salmon species have already passed through this stretch of river.