ADF&G opens youth-only fishing events across Southcentral, Southwest Alaska

For a few bright days this summer, some of Southcentral Alaska's best salmon water belongs to the kids — and the grown-ups are told to reel in and step back.

That's the quiet charm of the youth-only fisheries the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's Division of Sport Fish has scheduled across Southcentral and Southwest Alaska for 2026: during the event windows, adults can't fish the designated stretches at all. The rules are simple. Anglers must be 15 or younger.

No sport fishing license is required, though certain species call for a free harvest record card, available at ADF&G offices and most license vendors.

Anchorage anchors the calendar. The Ship Creek Youth Fishing Day, in its ninth year, takes over the creek from the C Street bridge up to The Bridge Restaurant on June 20, open to kids 15 and under from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. A week later, the Campbell Creek Youth-Only King Salmon Fishery claims the run between Dimond Boulevard and the Old Seward Highway on the last Saturday and Sunday of June, 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The events fan out from there. On the Homer Spit, Nick Dudiak Fishing Lagoon goes youth-only on the first Saturday in June and again the first and third Saturdays in August. In the Mat-Su, Fish Creek opens to anglers 15 and under for everything but king salmon — from the ADF&G markers a quarter mile above Knik-Goose Bay Road — on the first Saturday and Sunday of August, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. And in Seward, First Lake runs the most festival-like of the bunch, splitting kids into age groups of 1–7 and 8–15 and capping the morning with free hot dogs, prizes, and noon drawings at the First Lake Pavilion; it marked its 25th year in 2024.

For families who want the whole package, ADF&G's Hunter Education Indoor Shooting Range also hosts Outdoor Youth Days, a three-day outdoor-skills camp for ages 10 to 14 that folds fishing in with wildlife conservation lessons.

Full dates, locations, and target species for every event are listed in the June issue of the department's Reel Times newsletter, in its events-and-deadlines section.