Alaska Fishing

Southcentral king salmon anglers got news they both anticipated and dreaded Thursday morning.

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Starting Saturday, the popular Deshka River will be off limits to king salmon fishing for the rest of the season because of poor returns, state fish and game officials announced.

The ban comes on the heels of an already-limited season in which fishing had been restricted to catch and release much of the week.

Last year, the state closed the fishery on June 20.

The reason for the all-out ban is a dismal return of kings to the river, located near Willow about 35 miles northwest of Anchorage.

As of Wednesday, only 865 kings had been counted passing through a weir located at Mile 7 of the stream, far less than the normal average of about 5,400 kings for this time of year.

Even with the ban in place, the state projects only about 5,600 kings will reach the spawning grounds, far fewer than the minimum escapement goal of 13,000 that biologists would like to see to ensure healthy future returns.

"Yeah, there's no fish, just like they say," said longtime Mat-Su fishing guide Dan Lewis, who has had 45 charter trips canceled this summer. "I'm glad it's closed down."

Joe Wright, president of the Deshka Landing Outdoor Association and a Deshka angler for more than 20 years, said about 125 boats use the landing on a good weekend day. Already, traffic is down two-thirds, he said.

"We're concerned but our concern is for the fishery itself," he said. "What are you going to do?"

The Deshka is just one chink in a crumbling king salmon fishery across much of Southcentral:

• The Anchor River is closed. Through Wednesday, only 708 kings had returned to the Kenai Peninsula stream that two years ago saw more than 9,500 kings come back.

• Kodiak Island king returns have been awful. The Ayakulik River, which saw more than 6,000 kings spawn two years ago, has just 370 fish upriver, and on Thursday Fish and Game banned anglers from keeping any kings. Likewise, only 192 kings have passed the weir in the Karluk River, which saw nearly 2,000 fish two years ago. Sportfishing will close there on Monday.

• Copper River dipnet- ters cannot keep any king salmon because the run there is so weak.

• The Kenai River's early king run is lagging 21 percent behind last year's so-so return with 5,006 fish past the in-river sonar. As recently as 2005, some 8,300 kings had been counted by this time of the year.

Nobody is sure what's causing the shortfall, though theories abound -- kings caught accidentally in commercial fisheries, warming ocean water, in-river problems that kill off smolt before they reach the sea.

Earlier this year, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council capped the number of kings that the Bering Sea pollock industry can catch at 60,000 -- though Fish and Game's area sportfish biologist Dave Rutz believes that few of those fish are bound for Cook Inlet.

"It's real tough to say what's the cause -- it can be with freshwater survival combined with marine survival problems," Rutz said. "We've seen it before in the early 1990s and latter part of the '70s. There are always troughs and peaks."

In 1995, for instance, just 10,048 kings passed the Deshka weir. Two years later, the run had more than tripled.

Mike Vencha, owner of Deshka Wilderness Lodge, expects to lose about $40,000 in business this season.

"Normally, we'd be booked this whole month," said Vencha, who believes other Cook Inlet rivers without weirs -- such as Lake Creek and the Talchulitna River -- should be closed too. "We just opened up two years ago. We're just starting out and this happens.

"We've got a weir so we suffer. They close our river down and leave those others open. Everyone should have to suffer."

In addition to the sportfishing closure, a commercial king salmon fishery in the northern district of Cook Inlet will be shut down for its final two regularly scheduled Monday periods.

Rutz said commercial fishermen caught 76 kings in the first opening, 550 in the second and about 700 in the last one.

"Not that many of those fish go to the Deshka," he noted. "That's all of northern Cook Inlet."

Last year, 7,533 kings eventually made it up the Deshka to spawn -- the fewest since state biologists installed a weir on the river in 1995.

As recently as 2004, nearly 58,000 kings passed the Deshka weir.

Rutz noted that the Deshka's average sportfishing harvest is about 6,500 kings. The combination of early restrictions and Thursday's closure may have saved three-quarters of those fish for spawning, he said.

That's fine, Lewis said, but he believes sportfishing restrictions only nibble at the problem.

"It seems to me you can't run all those big nets in the ocean and see the fish come back," the guide said.

"There sure seemed to be a lot more fish decades ago before they started managing it so hard."

Reporter Stephanie Kormarnitsky contributed to this reporter. Reach reporter Mike Campbell at mcampbell@adn.com or 257-4329.

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