Kodiak River closes to sockeye fishing

Kodiak's Buskin River sockeye run isn't showing up, and the state is closing the whole sport fishery to protect it.

By June 21, only 916 sockeye had crossed the Buskin weir. In a normal year the count is around 3,200 by now, and that's usually only about 46 percent of the full run, with the biggest push still expected this week. But the fish aren't holding in the river or off the mouth, and the forecast was already poor. This isn't a run that's just late.

So the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is closing sockeye fishing in the Buskin drainage starting 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, June 24, through the end of the year. That's a full stop: no targeting sockeye, no keeping them, no catch-and-release. If you're fishing for something else and catch a sockeye, you have to release it without taking it out of the water.

The point is to get enough fish upriver to spawn, so there's still a run to come back to.