Chitina dipnetters will see catch limits boosted next year thanks to a somewhat surprising vote by the Alaska Board of Fisheries.
Meeting this week in Cordova -- a commercial fishing community where dipnetters are about as welcome as the December rain at Alyeska Ski Resort -- the board voted 4 to 3 to bring limits for the Copper River east of Anchorage in line with those for the Kenai River south of the state's largest city.
That means the old limits of 15 for a one-person household and up to 30 for a household of two or more have been expanded. The permit holder can now harvest 25 salmon -- with another 10 for each additional member of the household.
Commercial fisherman get larger share
Cordova commercial fishermen compete with dipnetters for Copper River fish. They get the first crack at the returning fish -- a prized commodity in international markets each May -- in the Gulf of Alaska just before they enter the river and generally catch about six times as many fish as the dipnetters
Those fishermen have fought to hang onto the lion's share of the catch, and past efforts by personal-use fishermen to gain a bigger share have failed.
Four years ago, dipnetters asked the board to reinstate the Copper River subsistence fishery only to be denied unanimously. The fishery had been a subsistence fishery until passage of a state subsistence law in 1978 granted a legal priority to both subsistence hunting and fishing.
Commercial fishermen then argued it was wrong to give dipnetters a priority on the salmon. The board agreed and made the Copper River dipnet fishery into what was called a "personal-use fishery.''
Despite the change, dipnetters continue to use nets to scoop fish out of the turbulent, brown waters of the Copper River in much the same way the Ahtna Athabascans did before the first white men arrived in the state. The only real difference is that the old nets were made with spruce handles and tree-root webbing whereas the new ones employ aluminum and nylon.
Still, the fish go to feed families, and this time the fish board, with a slightly different make up than in the past, said that was worthy of more consideration.
Average harvest of 130,000 fish
Voting to increase the limit were Karl Johnstone, a retired Anchorage Superior Court judge; Tom Kluberton, a lodge owner in Talkeetna; and Reed Morisky, a Fairbanks sportfishing guide. They were joined by Fritz Johnson, a commercial fishermen and economic development coordinator from Dillingham in Western Alaska, to form a majority.
John Jensen, a commercial fisherman from Petersburg and Sue Jeffrey, a commercial fisherman from Kodiak, were joined by Orville Huntington from the Interior village of Huslia in voting against. Huntington is a subsistence advocate. Some residents of the Glennallen area have argued that the personal use fishery, which attracts about 10,000 permit holders to the region every summer, interferes with subsistence activities.
The fishery has grown somewhat in recent years after first peaking in 1997 when about 10,000 permitted fishermen caught 150,000 sockeye salmon. Both the effort and the catch fell at the start of the new millennium, but it has increased to about 10,000 permits and an average harvest of 130,000 fish a year this decade.
The bag limit boost drew immediate praise from the Fairbanks-based Chitina Dipnetters Association, which issued a press release praising the board for "recognizing the importance to Alaskan families of the harvest of our natural resources."
Big families get more
A key function of the proposal was to provide a larger harvest of salmon for larger families.
The increase in potential harvest under the new regulations will be somewhat offset by the board's dumping a 10-fish bonus limit the Alaska Department of Fish and Game could order instituted if a glut of salmon hit the river.
The dipnetters association said a bigger bag is far better "due to the difficulty and expense of additional trips for only 10 salmon."
It's about a 630-mile, round-trip drive from Fairbanks to Chitina, the tiny community around which the dipnet fishery swirls. The round-trip driving distance from Anchorage is a little over 500 miles.
Chitina salmon used to offer a cheap supply of protein to tens of thousands of Alaskans, but as fuel prices have climbed in recent years the fishery has become less economical.
Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com