Anchorage Daily News

WASILLA -- The Mat-Su is known for its feisty silver salmon. The hard-fighting, fierce-biting fish return each summer by the thousands to such well-known streams as the Deshka and Little Susitna Rivers, as well as Willow Creek and Montana Creek off the Parks Highway and Jim Creek along the mud flats of the Knik River Valley.

The good news for anglers is that after last year's meager run, silvers have arrived early this year, and the run appears strong.

The bad news is crowds of anglers.

But two small creeks that meander through the heart of the Matanuska Valley feature fine runs that often get overlooked.

Valley drivers cross Cottonwood Creek and Wasilla Creek thousands of times each day, perhaps not realizing that the narrow waters coursing alongside the road or running through a culvert rear healthy runs of fish.

As both creeks leave the encroaching development of the still-booming Valley behind and enter the wide-open vistas of the Palmer Hay Flats State Game Refuge, they take on a more wilderness feel.

Anyone looking for an antidote to the increasing crowds at Jim Creek, the Eklutna Tailrace, or the gaggle of boats at the mouth of the Deshka might want to try these weekend-only fisheries.

I fished both streams as a kid. I caught my first salmon, a 6-pound silver, at Rabbit Slough, which is part of the Wasilla Creek drainage. I caught my first sockeye salmon on Cottonwood Creek.

I recently visited both streams for the first time since those early fishing experiences. Both streams hadn't changed a bit -- at least downstream in the refuge.

Upstream, of course, great change has occurred -- housing developments, improved roads, traffic, more places to shop, more people.

Has this development affected the runs?

Hard to say.

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough requires any development have a 75-foot buffer from all waterways. That's been in place since the mid 1980s. The borough recommends that anyone building near a stream also leave a buffer of vegetation streamside, but that is not part of the building code and thus cannot be enforced.

Weir fish counts vary dramatically year to year on both creeks. In the mid 1990s, poor runs closed Rabbit Slough for several years, said Fish and Game assistant area biologist Sam Ivey. In 1997, the first year a weir was set up on Wasilla Creek/Rabbit Slough, 437 silvers and five reds were counted.

But the run improved and fishing reopened on weekends only in the late 1990s. In both 2000 and 2001, more than 6,000 silvers and close to 200 reds passed the weir.

However, in 2003, the last year the weir operated, the number of silvers had dropped to 3,000 fish, though the number of reds continued to improve.

Cottonwood Creek has long been a weekend-only fishery. Ivey said in such a small fishery it's imperative that salmon be given more time to escape upstream to spawn.

The number of reds in Cottonwood Creek dropped dramatically early this decade. In 2000, a whopping 16,871 sockeye coursed through the little creek; by 2003, that number had dropped to 4,600, according to fish count data on the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Web site.

Cottonwood Creek is a slow-moving stream full of oxbows and cut banks. It carves its way through the silty, grass-studded mud flats before emptying into Knik Arm.

On Sunday, bait fishers set up on holes and waited patiently, while others repeatedly cast coho flies in an attempt to line fish through the mouth, the same technique used on the Russian River.

Judy Read of Wasilla was one of the patient anglers. She sat in a chair, calmly watching her line as it sat in the water. That patience was rewarded; using a bit of yarn and salmon roe, she landed a shiny silver salmon -- one of the few caught that day -- as well as an ocean-bright red.

In about an hour of fishing, Read, husband Ben and sons Riley, 12, and Kegan, 16, had nearly caught their limit of three fish each (only two of which can be silvers).

"She always outfishes me," Ben said. "I'm too impatient."

The family lives not far from Cottonwood Creek and considers it the local fishing hole. Judy said she likes Cottonwood because it's close, and because it's easy to find your own space to fish.

"If you want to catch fish, you don't have to get elbow to elbow," she said.

Rabbit Slough similarly has plenty of holes to fish. Unlike Cottonwood Creek, which features wide-open vistas of grassland and the Chugach Range, Rabbit Slough is crowded with brush for several miles.

On a recent scouting trip, the slough was high, but gin clear, and two schools of fish darted back and forth along the grassy stream bottom.

Bring hip waders to ford side streams if you want to walk downstream of the access point near the Parks-Glenn Highway Interchange. Best bet for silvers is to find a nice hole and fish with cured roe.

Remember that both fisheries are weekend only, and fishing is allowed 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Around 5:30 p.m., people start leaving one by one. By 6, the once-full muddy parking lot was nearly empty

Find Ron Wilmot online at adn.com/contact/rwilmot or call 907-352-6712.

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