My favorite species of salmon to fish for are silver salmon. In my opinion, they are the most aggressive and most spectacular fighting fish that swims in the Kenai River.
There’s another thing I like about silver salmon. Year in, year out, it’s our most consistent fishery.
Well, that is until this year. It was tough fishing.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) monitors the state fisheries and the silver salmon runs in Upper Cook Inlet were in trouble this year. So much trouble that most streams and creeks were either restricted or closed to help protect future runs.
Specifically, on the Kenai River the silver salmon fishery was restricted to single hook and no bait on 8/1. The run struggled to build and on 8/24 the limit was reduced from 2 to 1 fish per day. A week later, on 9/1, the September limit was reduced from 3 to 2 fish per day.
This has been the first time in my life I experienced an in season reduction of silver salmon limits on the Kenai River.
If there was a “silver” lining to the season, there was only one trip where we weren’t able to boat a silver salmon. We caught a few pinks that day so we weren’t fishless, but no silvers found their way to our gear.
The “not-so silver” lining is boat limits were hard to come by. On average we’d land 2-4 silvers in a full day. Let me repeat that last part…a full day. Call me spoiled, but that’s very un-silver like.
With 2024 in the books, my sights are now set on next year’s fishing. I’m cautiously optimistic for it and hope the actions ADFG took this year will insure a better fishing future. I can always handle an off year and rationalize it as “that’s just fishing.” However, considering we’ve had multiple years of poor king salmon returns, it’s hard not think that the silver runs could follow suit. Time will only tell…
In the meantime, I’m going to spend my winter dreaming of a river full of salmon from May until October.
2024 Pink Salmon Recap