The Tanana opens for chum, but the kings must all go back

There are enough summer chum in the Tanana this year to open a fishery, and starting July 27, residents near Fairbanks, North Pole, and Salcha can dip net and run fish wheels for them. The summer chum run is strong — projected around a million fish — enough to justify the personal-use opening on a limited weekly schedule through mid-August.

The kings are another story. Chinook are running far below average and aren't expected to meet their escapement goals, including the count bound for Canada, so every king that turns up in the gear has to go back in the water alive, immediately — no retention. If managers see signs that people are targeting kings rather than catching them by accident, they'll tighten the fishery further.

The opening arrives with a catch of a different kind. Subsistence salmon fishing in the same stretch of river remains closed, and upriver subsistence communities are living under strict limits of their own. Some tribal and subsistence advocates have questioned why a personal-use fishery should open while subsistence stays shut — a fairness argument that tends to surface whenever the two are managed on different tracks.