Fish and Game begins mailing sport fishing survey to about 47,000 households

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game begins mailing its 2026 Alaska Sport Fishing Survey this week to about 47,000 randomly selected resident and nonresident households with at least one member who bought a sport fishing license or held a permanent license card in 2026.

The survey asks anglers to recall how many days members of their household fished, how many fish they caught and kept by species and where they fished. Those answers become the state's estimates of fishing effort, catch and harvest. The department says it combines that information with creel surveys and other data to protect and improve Alaska's sport fisheries.

The survey has run every year since 1977. Households receive a booklet, a color fish identification index and a postage-paid return envelope.

In small fisheries, returns can be thin. At a February Alaska Peninsula, Aleutian Islands and Chignik finfish meeting, department staff told the Board of Fisheries that response rates from that region were too low to produce estimates for individual fisheries. Anglers there averaged 13,401 fishing days a year from 2015 to 2024, less than 1% of the statewide total, according to a December 2025 department report.

Results from the 2026 survey are due by fall 2027. Past results for study years 1996 through 2025 are posted on the survey's website.