Third gear cut in a week leaves setnetters absorbing a weak Susitna run

Northern District setnetters will fish Thursday's opener on a sliver of their gear for the third time in about a week, as Fish and Game keeps tightening the fishery to protect a Susitna sockeye run that isn't hitting its numbers.

Thursday's order allows one 35-fathom net per permit in the General Subdistrict and two nets totaling 70 fathoms in the Eastern Subdistrict, for the 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. period. Cook Inlet rules normally allow up to 105 fathoms. The July 23 opener ran at 70 fathoms, July 27 at one net, and now this.

Each cut comes by emergency order under a management plan that lets the department pare gear through Aug. 6 to hold down the sockeye harvest. The department says it may ease the limits if abundance recovers.

Until it does, the roughly 530 Area H setnet permit holders, most of them family operations, are the ones absorbing the shortfall, a slice of gear at a time.