So few kings are left in the Situk that the state closed their last pool

The king salmon aren't coming back to the Situk River this year — at least not in anything like the numbers they should. As of July 8, with more than half the run's usual timing elapsed, just 100 large kings had passed the counting weir, far short of the several hundred needed to sustain the run. So Fish and Game did something to protect the few that made it: it closed the Rodeo Hole, a popular fishing spot, to all sport fishing through Aug. 15.

The closure isn't about king fishing — that's already banned across the whole Situk drainage. It's about the sockeye. The Situk is having a strong sockeye run, and the fishing is good, which means plenty of anglers on the water. The problem is that the river's surviving kings are holding in the same deep pools, like the Rodeo Hole, where a line cast for sockeye can easily snag one. Closing the hole keeps those last kings off the end of a hook.

Any king hooked by accident elsewhere now has to be released without leaving the water.