Kodiak's silver salmon are stacking up at the Buskin, waiting for rain

Kodiak's silver salmon are piling up at the mouth of the Buskin River instead of running upstream — waiting, biologists say, for rain that hasn't come.

Just over 500 coho had passed the Buskin's counting weir as of this week, and the state's Kodiak area management biologist, Tyler Polum, said few more are likely to move through until significant rain falls. It's a familiar late-summer pattern: with the river low and warm, the fish school up near the saltwater and hold. Polum reads the slow count as a run held up at the mouth, not one that failed to show.

The story is much the same at other road-system streams. Pillar and Monashka creeks are also low and warm, with silvers just starting to school and the incoming tide the better bet for anglers. On Afognak, the runs look past their peak, and the lakes are fishing better than the river mouths. The exceptions are Olds and Pasagshak, both fishing well.

The delay matters more on the Buskin this year. The river is already closed to sockeye sport fishing through the end of the year after its red salmon came in well below average. Its coho run has been thin lately too — the 2024 count fell short of the range the river needs, though last year's landed back inside it. That gap is part of a running disagreement: Kodiak commercial fishermen have argued that low, warm water can hold runs back, and that managers should weigh those conditions rather than leaning strictly on the fish counts.