Alaska Fishing

Master guide Mike Fenton was on the Kenai River on Wednesday morning prospecting for fish in anticipation of the weekend arrival of about 100 Wounded Warriors.

Along one bank was a moose, he reported when reached by cell phone at the helm of his riverboat. Along the other bank, he said, was a bald eagle.

But there was no sign of king salmon, at least not by midday.

Not to worry too much.

They should be coming soon. This year's return appears to be tracking along similar to that of the last two years, and in both of those there was a big swell of fish between June 3, which was Wednesday, and June 10, which is next Wednesday.

Between June 3 and June 10 last year, the number of kings in the river nearly doubled from 3,301 to 6,341. Between the same dates the year before, it more than tripled from 1,892 and 6,839.

All of which provides some reason for optimism.

Fenton is hoping for a peak in the return by the weekend, because it could make for very, very good king salmon angling.

"The water clarity (which improves fishing success) is about as good as it gets," he said, and the weather forecast for the Saturday and Sunday is excellent.

"The fishing is going to be great," Fenton said. "The only question is the catchin'."

Jan C. Jonker, project coordinator for the Alaska State Elks Wounded Veterans Project in Homer, said about 100 troops from the Warrior Transition Battalion in Alaska are due to arrive in Soldotna on Saturday for a day and a half of action on the river.

This is the second year the Elks and the Kenai River Professional Guide Association have sponsored the event, which ends with a banquet Sunday night. The Elks put on the barbecue and help, in cooperation with ERA Aviation, provide transportation for vets from Fort Richardson in Anchorage and those flying in from Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks. The guides provide boats, housing and fishing expertise.

Last year, Jonker said, the troops "caught 20 to 30 fish." Fenton is hoping they do at least as well this year, though fishing has been generally slow. Kings have been trickling into the Kenai at a rate of only about 150 to 300 per day, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game sonar.

That's a stronger return than those being witnessed on most Southentral Alaska streams, but the Kenai is a big river. A few hundred fish can quickly disappear into its many king-holding areas. Fenton said guides have had to work hard to find fish. His clients, he said, have been bringing a total of one or two per day to the boat.

What that means is that everybody on the boat gets to see a fish, but only a minority of anglers on the boat get to hook a fish. Fenton would like to be doing better by the weekend.

"There's no more worthy cause than this,'' he said.

Hopefully some fish will agree, because in general around the region the king salmon return is looking unusually weak.

Fish and Game on Wednesday not only canceled the scheduled, weekend-open of the Anchor River because of low returns, but also extended a closed-to-fishing zone around the mouth of the river for two miles to the north and south along the shores of Cook Inlet.

Homer area biologist Nicki Szarzi reported only 219 kings past the weir on the Anchor as of Tuesday. The five-year average for the date is 2,560.

The situation is no better on the Copper River. Personal-use dipnetters there will be prohibited from keeping kings starting Monday. Area biologist Mark Somerville in Glennallen reported the decision was made to close the king season for the year after commercial fishermen off the mouth of the river reported dismal early-season king catches.

They were projected to catch almost 18,000 by now. They've caught less than a third of that, an indication of a very weak run to the Copper, which is seeing strong return of red salmon. Red salmon numbers by the end of May were about 25,000 above the pre-season projection of 141,000 for the month.

Dipnetting should be good through this week and into the opening next week, but dipnetters will have to let the kings go -- if they happen to get so luck as to catch one.

With king runs so weak, the reality is that there just haven't been a lot of the prized Alaska salmon being caught anywhere. The PSEA MatSu Valley King Derby started Saturday and didn't even have a fish entered until Monday. Angler Terri Hughes now leads the competition, which offers as a top prize a fishing trip for two to the Clover Pass Resort valued at $4,000, with a 41.6-pound king. His fish was caught on the Little Susitna River and was, as of Wednesday, the only one entered in the derby.

The derby website says there have been reports of more and bigger fish being caught at the Deshka River, but those reports could not be confirmed. And the Deshka weir count doesn't exactly make the fishing look hot. There were only 154 kings through the weir as of Tuesday.

The good news is that this is better than last year when a weak return forced the early closure of the Deshka. The bad news is that it's a tiny fraction of the banner year of 2004, when more than 2,500 kings were through the weir by the same date.

Region wide, the trend lines give king salmon anglers no good reasons to be particularly optimistic. A few kings are being caught in Ship Creek in downtown Anchorage, but only a few.

The king fishing is even reported slow at the old fishing hole at the Nick Dudiak Fishing Lagoon in Homer.

Maybe it's time to head inland. Lake fishing for landlocked salmon, grayling and char is generally reported to be good just about everywhere -- Anchorage, the Kenai and the MatSu -- and there lots of hooligan to be had in the Susitna and Twentymile rivers, though hooligan dipnetting in Turnagain Arm is now closed for the year.

Diehard salmon anglers hoping for anything to get hot are probably going to have to wait until the Russian River opens on June 11. And then it's still pretty much hit and miss as to how many red salmon show up there this year.

Find Craig Medred online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.

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