Fish board plans ratification vote, likely in January, on Cook Inlet drift gillnet limits

The Alaska Board of Fisheries will send the Cook Inlet drift gillnet limits it adopted in March out for 30 days of public comment, then hold a ratification vote, likely in January, board members said at a work session Thursday.

The limits never took effect. The Department of Law has held the package since March, and the 2026 drift season ran under the old rules. Once the board ratifies the package and it is filed, the regulations take another 30 days to become law, so the added steps take at least 60 days.

A Department of Law attorney told the board the March statewide package is "still technically" with the department's regulations attorney, who recommended the board take it back out for a vote to ratify the language. "This does not mean that the regulations package was disapproved," the attorney said.

Chair Marit Carlson-Van Dort said the package will be publicly noticed for 30 days of written comment, and the board will then meet to "essentially ratify unless there's something else comes up." Executive Director Art Nelson said that meeting will be held on Zoom without public testimony, probably in early to mid-January. The Department of Law urged the board earlier this month to add a second vote on the final text of its rules after 30 days of comment, Alaska News reported Oct. 21.

The board adopted the measure, known as Proposal 186, on March 20 by a 4-2 vote. The rule directs the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to manage the drift fleet to minimize its harvest of Northern District salmon and Kenai River coho. It caps fishing at 16 hours a day and five days a week, with two 32-hour closures weekly, and allows extra openings only when the Kenai River sockeye run tops 2.3 million fish.

On May 1, the board voted 0-6 against an emergency petition to repeal the rule. The petition argued the substitute language came too late for public comment and put a disproportionate burden on one user group, department staff said.

The Mat-Su Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission says it filed no proposals by the April 10 deadline for the next Upper Cook Inlet meeting, set for March 4-15, 2027, because it believed the rule was in effect. In an Oct. 13 letter, commission chair Pete Probasco asked why the regulations were not approved and how the proposal's issues can reach that meeting. "Only after the proposal deadline did we learn that the regulations were under legal review and could possibly be rejected by the Department of Law and Lieutenant Governor," Probasco wrote. The Kenai River Sportfishing Association made a similar request.

The Upper Cook Inlet proposal book includes proposals on the drift plan, among them one from the United Cook Inlet Drift Association to repeal it and two that would remove its weekly closed windows.