With summer days waning and the start of school for most Anchorage kids less than a week away, many people in Alaska's largest city don't have time for a days-long fishing trip to the Kenai Peninsula or Mat-Su.
And this year, at least, they may not have to. A small creek that bisects South Anchorage is producing good numbers of silver salmon.
Campbell Creek, which dumps into Campbell Lake before opening into the salty waters of Cook Inlet, is small even by creek standards. Most of it is only 20 feet wide or less. And with this year's high temperatures, low water has further reduced its flow.
But several species of salmon swim up the creek each year to spawn. These days, silver salmon are the dominant fish in the waterway. And they have proven easy to catch for anglers wily enough to fish early in the morning or late at night.
Since 1993, Fish and Game has stocked the creek with salmon and opened it up to anglers in July. Fishing is currently allowed from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game marker under the Dimond Boulevard bridge, upstream to the Old Seward Highway. Another smaller stretch of the creek, from the Lake Otis Parkway bridge to ADF&G markers on Shelikof Street, is also open to silver fishing. The bag limit is three fish more than 20 inches long, with three in possession.
At the Dimond Boulevard bridge Wednesday afternoon, the sounds of passing traffic often drowned out the sounds of nature. Only a few coho were seen, but that didn't dampen the enthusiasm of some young anglers chasing them.
Mason, 4 and his brother, Jerek, 8, were casting spinners into the clear waters of the creek, and they didn't seem to mind that they hadn't had much luck.
"We came down here and did a little fishing last Wednesday and they have been begging me to go fishing again since then," said Brenda Sisich, the boys' grandmother.
Fish and Game reports that the fishing has been good along much of the creek late at night or early in the morning. Silvers are being caught on bait and spinners.
"My friend's husband has been coming down here the last two nights in a row, and they have been catching their limits," Sisich said.
With easy access in the middle of Anchorage, calm water and fish that are biting, the creek is far from a secret spot. But it can provide a great opportunity to squeeze the last few days of summer for all they are worth, and perhaps help a young child catch his or her first salmon.
But as with any urban fishery, the constant presence of people has its effect. At Dimond Boulevard, dozens of salmon carcasses -- sans fillets – littered the shallow water and banks.
"It kind of pisses me off because I think they should be chopped up into smaller pieces and thrown into moving water," Joe Kaneshiro said as he scouted the creek for a late-evening fishing trip. "That's just the way people are, it's just like garbage in the street that you see in the spring every year. What can you do?"
Heavyweight halibut
Don't want to deal with urban traffic and messy creek banks? Recent catches out of Deep Creek on the southern Kenai Peninsula may provide a reason for one more halibut trip of the year. The Deep Creek Fishing Club, part of a local lodge, has landed five fish weighing more than 200 pounds in the last 10 days, with the largest topping the scales at 403 pounds – less than a hundred pounds off the state record.
Deep Creek Fishing Club co-owner Vivian Moe said three of the lunkers were caught Tuesday.
"Our first boat (the Megalodon) came back with two over 200 pounds, the smallest of which was 223 pounds," Moe said. "We knew that the other boat (the Kraken) had a big fish too, but we couldn't believe that a 233-pound fish would come in third!"
It did, when Fishing Club guest Curt Wells, from San Diego, California, weighed his 97-inch fish. The result: 403 pounds -- possibly the largest halibut caught in Cook Inlet in several years. The record for the 30-year-old Homer Jackpot Halibut Derby is the 376-pounder that Minnesotan Jerry Meinders caught in 1976.
"How can they possibly get any bigger?" Moe said. "My gosh!"
Other parts of the state are also enjoying good fishing:
• Especially clear water on both the Kenai and Kasilof rivers has rewarded anglers who get an early morning start. Silver salmon fishing is getting better day by day, and red salmon continue to trickle in. The Kenai bag limit has been boosted to six reds.
• Biologists at Fish and Game may be doing a jig, with the Kenai River king salmon return past the in-river sonar now past 21,000 fish. That's 67 percent more than last year and 43 percent more than 2013 -- and well within the optimal escapement range of 15,000 to 30,000 fish.
• The Deshka River saw a mad rush of silver salmon swim past the weir Tuesday. The 3,218 coho counted add up to 57 percent of the entire run to date and pushed the run ahead of last year's solid pace. Another 1,060 silver salmon entered the Deshka on Wednesday.
• Derby fans should head to Seward over the weekend. The city's silver salmon derby ends Sunday. As of Thursday afternoon, Kelly Landry of Kenai was in first place, worth $10,000, with her 14.92-pounder. A fish that small has never won in the derby's 60-year history. Gweneveve Hudson's modest 15.04-pound caught in 1965 is the lightest derby winner.