With few exceptions, Southcentral Alaska’s coho salmon run is sluggish

Jeremy Salvador was all smiles on Tuesday as he processed three silver salmon at the cleaning table at Anchorage’s Ship Creek Bridge.

Salvador has been reaching his limit of three silvers regularly, using a combination of technique, local knowledge and guile.

“I’ve been getting them both ways, bait and flossing,” said Salvador, who has fished Ship Creek since he was a teenager. “Just getting them at the right time. I just prefer coming in the morning. There are less people during the weekdays, so that’s about when I come.”

This year, he appears to be the exception. So far this summer, there’s been a dearth of silver salmon, also known as coho, throughout Southcentral Alaska. While there’s still time for runs to arrive within normal windows, there’s also a level of concern.

Salvador said despite his success, the fishery has been sluggish, and the low turnout of anglers this week at Ship Creek, even during ideal tide conditions, appears to reinforce that notion.

Donald Arthur, the Anchorage assistant area sportfish manager with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said coho runs are highly variable, sometimes starting as early as the first week of July.

“Typically across all those range of timings, we usually see a pretty good peak in the last week of July into the first few days of August, usually start to see limits by then,” he said. “And we are definitely not seeing that right now, which raises some concerns that either the run is just simply late — which, fingers crossed, that is the case. Or it’s weak, or a combination of both.”

Anchorage-area fisheries like Ship Creek, Bird Creek and Campbell Creek are enhanced with stocked fish, but reports of anglers reaching their limits have been rare, Arthur said.

He said Fish and Game is monitoring the situation closely. While they will often take a couple weeks off during the early portion of the run, they’re conducting two surveys a week at Ship Creek.

That lack of fish caused the postponement last weekend of the Coho Rodeo, a silver derby held in Ship Creek. Dustin Slinker, who operates The Bait Shack, rescheduled the tournament for Aug. 10 in the hope that the run would improve by then.

“There’s some low numbers,” he said. “Given what historically has been in this creek, you know, given this this time of year. ... I hope these fish are just late coming up, but 13 seasons looking out the window, (this is) by far the slowest start to cohos that I have seen.”

Beyond Anchorage, the state reacted to the slow return, issuing an order limiting the coho catch on Friday. Fish and Game announced a reduction in bag limit to one fish in all waters of the Susitna River drainage effective 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday. Baited hooks were also banned as part of order. The same limitations were put in place in the Little Susitna River and Jim Creek.

Projected escapement for coho may fall short of goals in those areas, Palmer Area Management Biologist Samantha Oslund said in statement.

[Studies show there are likely more ‘sushi worms’ in Alaska salmon and other fish than there used to be]

‘Usually it’s gangbusters out of Seward’

A reliable indicator of the timing and potential strength of Anchorage-area cohos can be found in Seward, where the massive silver run is celebrated by anglers and the centerpiece of the annual Seward Silver Salmon Derby. Arthur said that as of earlier this week, some people were catching more king salmon than silvers.

“Usually it’s gangbusters out of Seward,” Arthur said “You go to Pony Cove or Cheval Narrows this time of year, and usually it’s hard to keep coho off.”

Andy Mezirow, who operates the Gray Light charter service in Seward, said Friday silver fishing has been strong this week in select areas. He anticipates more about the strength of the run will be learned in the next week, when he expects salmon will populate the inner bay.

“Outside the bay, fishing has been quite good,” he said.

Randy Wells ran a charter fishing service in Seward for more than 15 years before his son took over the operation this summer. He said silver runs have continued to start running later in the year. When Wells sat on the board of directors for the Seward Chamber of Commerce, which organizes the derby, he pushed to make it later to coincide with the trends. The 69th derby is set to run from Aug. 10-18.

“I saw the run getting later and later and later,” he said. “They have done that but haven’t pushed it late enough.”

Wells still feels the timeline for fish arriving en masse is in the normal range he’s seen in recent years.

Salmon runs across Alaska have varied drastically this year depending on region and species. The Kenai River sockeye run has been strong. In Bristol Bay, commercial fishing operations have been fielding smaller fish. King salmon runs have faded to the point that a federal agency is investigating whether they should be classified as an endangered species.

Variability between species and regions

Arthur said differences in environmental conditions can have a significant effect on runs. For coho, those factors can even be intensified.

“Coho spend only just over a year out in the saltwater,” he said. “Outside of jack king salmon, they spend the shortest amount of time in saltwater. They grow the fastest during that time. They’re the fastest growing salmon species. But because they’re only out there for one year, they need good conditions in that one year. That’s why we see a lot of variability with coho, but also just variability between species and regions.”

Slinker said the approachable nature of the fishery makes cohos a favorite among locals and visitors.

“This is a fishery that I enjoy,” he said. ”Visitors from out of state, women, kids, individuals that necessarily do not fish, it tends to be an easier fishery. We get our gear in the water and have an honest opportunity at catching these fish. Not only because they’re an aggressive fish, but because they come in big schools.”

But so far, few of those schools have arrived at Ship Creek.

Even with his recent success, Salvador said that in his experience, the runs have been both later in the season and not as strong as in his early years in the creek. He’s now fishing closer to the mouth of the creek than he used to.

“The runs are not like they used to be for silvers,” he said, standing on the walking bridge. “I used to never have to walk down that far because they’d be right over here and you’d see them just loaded (in the water).”

Arthur said the unpredictability and high variability of the species is part of why the state generally doesn’t forecast coho runs.

While each year is unique, Slinker worries that bad returns could hurt the long-term viability of the fishery.

“At the end of the day, we’ve got to have fish,” he said. “Not only for now, for anglers and everyone to sustain through the wintertime but for the following year so we can continue to fish,” he said. “If we have a low return this year, what is it going to look like in another two years when these class of fish come back?”