Interior loses its salmon fishing — pike it is

Interior anglers got handed a rough trade this week: kings and chums are off the table across the Tanana drainage, and the fallback — northern pike out on Minto Flats — is scattered across a flooded marsh that'll make you work for it.

Start with the closures, because they're the real news. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has shut down all sport fishing for king salmon in every flowing water of the Tanana drainage — the Chena, the Goodpaster, the Salcha, all of it — driven by a below-average Yukon king forecast. That includes catch-and-release; any king you hook while fishing for something else has to go straight back. A second order does the same for chum salmon. Between them, two of the Interior's salmon fisheries are simply closed.

Which leaves pike, and even that comes with an asterisk this year. A heavy snowpack has flooded Minto Flats, so the fish are spread far and wide rather than stacked in the usual spots. "Expect the northern pike to be widely dispersed," area biologist Andrew Gryska wrote, advising anglers to cover water and throw big, flashy spoons, spinners, or topwater to get their attention. If the Flats are too scattered for your liking, Gryska points to other nearby pike water — Cushman Lake, Little Harding Lake, the Tanana's sloughs and tributary mouths, and Harding Lake, though Harding is catch-and-release for pike.

The through-line is the same one running through Alaska's whole summer: salmon are in trouble, the rules are tightening to match, and anglers are being nudged toward the fish that can still take the pressure.