Fairbanks-area personal use chum fishing opens at 6 p.m. Friday on the Tanana

Personal use chum salmon fishing on the Tanana River opens at 6 p.m. Friday, Aug. 28, for households in Fairbanks, North Pole and Salcha, the first salmon opportunity in Subdistrict 6-C since the summer chum fishery closed at noon on Aug. 12. In federal public waters of the Tanana drainage, chum harvest stays restricted to federally qualified Yukon River subsistence users. Fairbanks sits in a nonsubsistence area where the subsistence priority does not apply. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game's emergency order 3-S-FY-06-26 sets two 42-hour periods per week: 6 p.m. Mondays to noon Wednesdays, and 6 p.m. Fridays to noon Sundays.

Legal gear is dip nets and manned fish wheels. All coho salmon must be released alive. A personal use salmon permit and a valid resident sport fishing license are required, and household possession is limited to 75 chum and coho combined for periods after Aug. 15. Whitefish and sucker fishing with manned fish wheels follows the same schedule, other gear around the clock, subject to permit stipulations and its own license.

As of Aug. 25, genetic analysis at the Pilot Station sonar put 752,000 fall chum in the Yukon, above the historical median of 647,000 for the date and above the upper end of the 300,000 to 600,000 drainagewide escapement goal. The Yukon River Drainage Fall Chum Salmon Management Plan closes personal-use and sport chum fisheries only when the projected run is 300,000 or fewer. With tributary goals also met, the department says it can ease restrictions where Canadian-origin fish will not be intercepted, including the Tanana, while the mainstem stays closed to protect those fish, which managers do not expect to meet treaty goals. Coho are the opposite: projections run 63,000 to 86,000 against a historical average index of 212,000.

Federal public waters of the Tanana drainage closed to fall chum and coho harvest for all users on Aug. 15, and subsistence fishers in Subdistricts 6-A and 6-B regained selective-gear chum retention at 1 p.m. Wednesday, a right reserved for federally qualified users rather than the personal-use fishery now opening in Fairbanks.

The schedule can be closed by emergency order at any time. Area management biologist Matt Olson is at 907-459-7274 in Fairbanks. Fishing schedules and counts: 1-866-479-7387.