Fish board opens comment on Cook Inlet drift gillnet rules it adopted in March

The Alaska Board of Fisheries opened public comment Thursday on limits for Cook Inlet's commercial drift gillnet fleet that it adopted in March but that never took effect. Comments are due by 11:59 pm Dec. 22.

The limits are meant to get more coho salmon past the fleet to northern Cook Inlet streams, including the Deshka and Little Susitna rivers in the Mat-Su. Fish and Game staff told the board in March that about 90% of the coho the drift fleet catches are headed north. Last month, the board listed Little Susitna coho as a stock of concern.

Under the proposed rules, the fleet would fish mostly in waters off the Kenai and Kasilof rivers from July 16 to 31, for no more than 16 hours a day. Two closures each week would keep it off the water on Tuesdays and Fridays. Extra openings would come only when the Kenai River sockeye run tops 2.3 million fish. In August, the fleet would drop to two days a week sooner if its share of the sockeye catch falls off.

The fleet is now the main commercial harvester of Kenai and Kasilof sockeye, Fish and Game staff say. In March, they estimated the limits could cut its sockeye catch by roughly a million fish in a year like 2024, depending on how the sockeye move into the inlet.

The board adopted the limits 4-2 on March 20. The state Department of Law was still reviewing them when the season opened, so the fleet fished this summer under the old rules. A department attorney recommended the board vote again to ratify the language. "This does not mean that the regulations package was disapproved," Edward Lee, the attorney who advises the board, said in October.

After comments close, the board plans to meet online, probably in January, without public testimony. Chair Marit Carlson-Van Dort said the board would "essentially ratify unless there's something else comes up." The limits are also up again at the board's Upper Cook Inlet meeting in March, where the United Cook Inlet Drift Association has proposed repealing them.

The rules apply only in state waters. Federal managers regulate salmon fishing in the inlet's federal waters.