Editor’s note: As the first king salmon of the year are being caught from downtown Anchorage’s Ship Creek, and the fish and fishermen return in droves, it seems a perfect time to take a longer look at the most popular urban fishery in America.
By Lee Leschper
It was the last cast of the morning.
I’d been late getting to the water and my early companions had caught fish or given up and left. Now I was almost alone, as the incoming tide was rushing in, soon to be too deep to fish.
And then my swinging fly stopped dead and the 9-weight jerked down to the surface. With the deep head shakes of a heavy fish, it surged against the rod as if testing me, then turn and tore downstream in a screaming run.
Stumbling, slipping, falling to keep up, I chased it downstream with all the fly line and lots of backing already off the reel.
Water too deep to wade stopped me after 100 yards. Waist deep, feeling the edge of a deep hole, I dug in and leaned hard into the 9-weight and finally slowed the big king.
And there we stayed, slugging it out for at least ten minutes, the tide rising fast and the fish using the current to keep its distance.
Finally, slowly, then with increasing speed, it shot back toward me and then past, headed upstream.
The bank fishermen waiting for higher tide to flood their holes whooped as the big hen broke in front of them. But in the next deep hole she ran out gas. With steady pressure I was able to slide her onto the last bit of muddy bank, 25+ pounds of polished bright king salmon, still carrying sea lice and the epitome of what makes these fish so special.
After stringing the fish and wading upstream to beat the rushing tide, I had to stop one second to reflect on the muddy banks, bridges, railroad trestle and high rises of downtown Anchorage. The setting is hardly wilderness, but the fishing is plenty wild!
Unique fishery and setting
Anchorage’s Ship Creek is often touted as the best urban fishery in America. It certainly is the only place in America where anglers, even first-time anglers, can consistently take a lunch break and catch a big king or silver salmon.
The narrow channel gushing through industrial downtown would be overlooked, were it not for the salmon, especially hulking kings and brilliant silvers that fill its current and holes each summer.
It may be the most diverse fishery in Alaska or the country, if not the world.
You will find massive Samoan teenagers fishing alongside wiry Native Alaskans, self-reliant lady anglers and clean-cut Air Force and Army troopers. And often three generations of families fishing together.
The common language is the salmon.
There’s friendly competition, and anglers celebrate or suffer with an audience. Once hooked up, an angler will get plenty of advice, and help landing their fish
There are exceptions.
Last summer I took a quick fishing lunch break that coincided with a favorable low tide. I was surprised to find the creek virtually deserted, which usually means no fish because none had come in on the morning tide.
I waded to my favorite hole and in ten minutes was hooked into a bright 20-pound hen king that ran me up and down the creek for 10 minutes before I beached her in the mud. Looking up, I was pleasantly amused to see I still had the whole creek to myself.
Don’t count on that too often!
In the 2016 ADF&G Harvest Survey, the most recent available, Ship Creek had 18,329 days fished. Given that it’s really a 90-day season on the creek, even with the same anglers fishing often, that’s a lot of fishing by a lot of fishermen.
Fishery with a purpose
The limit for kings in freshwaters for all Southcentral Alaska is five kings per year, and many of us will take our five kings all from Ship Creek. The hatchery fish are there for the taking and it takes pressure off wild kings on other rivers from the Matsu Valley to the lower Kenai Peninsula.
Only a small portion of the hatchery kings and silvers returning to the creek each summer are needed to meet the hatchery’s needs to produce fingerlings to stock fisheries throughout Southcentral Alaska.
The Hernandez Hatchery came online in 2011 and produced its first fish for stocking in 2011. The fish from those early stockings began returning in 2014 and 2015. Those and more recent stockings are building what seem to be larger and larger returning runs of both kings and silvers.
The average Ship Creek king salmon probably weighs 18 to 22 pounds. But there are many 30-pound fish caught each year. The Ship Creek Derby winner seems to typically fall in the mid-30s range. But there are at least a few 40-pound fish, and some exceeding 50 pounds, caught each year.
While this is not the legendary Kenai, there are also kings exceeding 70 pounds that make it all the way to the hatchery. Hooking such a behemoth is always possible—landing them is something entirely different.
Here I once hooked a huge male that simply refused to believe it was hooked and sulked in a deep hole, my 9-weight bent to the water’s surface, without moving for 30 minutes. Until it awoke and ran 200 yards in 10 seconds before breaking off.
There are two primary schools of anglers here, divided by their tactics and the tides they fish.
At low tide, a hard-core contingent of flippers fish much as they would for red salmon on the Kenai or Russian, flossing a fly on a long leader across the bottom. It’s effective especially when there are schools of new fish in the creek, as happens in early June with kings and late July with silvers.
There are two schools among flippers, those who patiently work the same stretch of water for hours, and then there are the run-and-gun fans, who are constantly wading up or down stream, casting and prospecting and looking for holding fish.
Water visibility can range from crystal clear to the color of latte coffee, depending on rainfall upstream. But when it’s clear, there is often the chance to see fish holding in the deep runs.
Flippers also foul hook many fish, which must be released. While they may not die from hook wounds, many of these fish will not be able to spawn later.
They will also sometimes spook out and blast downstream, backs completely out of the water and skittering between angler’s legs. It’s certainly a wakeup call!
The other school of anglers, probably the major, wait for high tide and fish cured salmon eggs near bottom, to intercept the kings swimming upstream with the incoming tide. At high tide, traditionalists can cast hardware with good success.
Both kings and silvers will slam a bushy streamer, spin-in-glow or ball of yarn, especially when fresh into the creek. Most of the fish I catch are still carrying sea lice, evidence they’d been in the creek only hours.
Crowds of bank anglers gather at known hotspots hours before high tide, staking out a favorite spot.
The rig is a heavy pyramid sinker to hold bottom on a sliding rig, with several feet of leader tipped with a spin-and-glow and a ball of cured salmon eggs. The key is placing that weight in the bottom of the gravel trench lining the bottom of the creek. That narrow channel is the salmon’s preferred travel route. As they move up stream they’re likely to grab a gob of eggs they swim into.
Silver anglers will prefer to fish eggs under a float. While the wary fish can develop lockjaw, especially during bright hours, at low light they can turn into ravenous black tailed wolves.
There are also successful anglers who pitch hardware, primarily large Vibrax spinners, near high tide. Fickle fish may ignore cast lures for hours or may slam the first one that passes in range. A big No. 6 blue and silver Vibrax is hard to beat. It will get deep and is easy to cast.
The Face of Ship Creek
Dustin Slinker has owned and operated the Bait Shack on Ship Creek since 2011, providing gear, bait and expert advice to thousands of anglers fishing the creek.
He is a decorated Army veteran and brings intensity and energy to his defacto stewardship of the creek, its fish and fishermen.
Kings are June fish, Dustin said, beginning to arrive the third week in May and continuing to gather steam in the creek with each incoming tide thereafter through June.
“The last couple of years the first king has been showing up about May 22-24, then it will be quiet a few days, then about the 29th or 30th, it explodes with more fish and just gets better and better on every tide.
“It usually peaks until Father’s Day, about the third week in June. Then it dwindles down. But there will be kings until August.”
Normally July 13 is the last day to retain kings, but in 2017 ADF&G bumped the daily limit to two and extended the season because a big run had far exceeded the hatchery’s needs.
“The silvers start showing up in numbers the third week in July, so they sort of trade places with the kings,” Slinker said. “Which is nice for the creek, because after about July 4th it gets quiet there’s the transition to dip netting down on the Kenai and the creek clears out.”
The last week in July to the last week in August are usually prime time for silvers in the creek, he said.
Ship Creek’s importance is not just convenient for Anchorage anglers, but as the site of many first fish memories.
“What I remember is the people that bring their first fish up to the Shack, to get their picture on Facebook. Especially the little kids. And now some of those kids are coming back, now in college or beyond, sometimes with their own kids and their first fish.
“That’s the payback for me, right there, seeing those people grow up on that creek.”
Each year he opens the Shack in mid-May and is open full-time about Memorial Day, 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. 7 days a week through the summer. It has become the go-to spot for gear, bait and advice, and his Facebook follow is now in the thousands.
Fishing the creek doesn’t require fancy gear or special skills, he said.
“The most important thing is patience,” he said. “You need to fish with the tides, three hours before to three hours after the peak of it. Both bait and spinners will catch kings and silvers. “
He believes the new Hernandez hatchery has been a positive influence on the creek’s runs.
“Since the new hatchery came online in 2011, we’re been seeing the first classes of those fish and it seems those fish have been healthy, better quality.”
He credits quality control at the new hatchery that is releasing young salmon better able to survive and flourish while at seas.
Slinker is the father of the Creek’s kids fishing day, for anglers under 16, on the third Saturday in June. He wrote the proposal, got it approved by the Board of Fish and helped shepherd the first event in 2017. To say it was successful is a vast understatement—more than 400 kids and their families gathered at the creek for fishing, hotdogs, lots of free gear and a lifetime of memories. And they even caught a few fish!
The 2018 Kids’ Fishing Day at Ship Creek will be held on Saturday, June 16. Anglers 15 years old and younger can fishing from the C Street Bridge upstream to the Restaurant Bridge 6 a.m.-6 p.m.
He recently was elected president of the Alaska Sport Fishing Association and see the creek playing a key role in ASFA’s mission.
“The most important aspect of the creek is it’s the first stop for lots of folks, both new residents to Alaska and visitors from outside. It’s here that they first see what fishing in Alaska is about. It’s their first impression.
“It’s unique in that this is a terminal fishery, that most of these fish are expected to be harvested for the table, but it’s also a place that encourages anglers to participate in sport fishing, to learn.”
Learning not only how to fish properly and catch fish, but how to fish ethically and legally, and to treat both the fish and other fishermen with respect and courtesy, he said.
“How they learn here first, will often determine who they conduct themselves and fish elsewhere.”
There’s plenty of peer pressure among anglers to follow regulations like open hours (6 a.m.-11 p.m. for kings) and limits (one king, three silvers per day), and not keeping foul-hooked fish. But there’s also a regular state trooper presence, monitoring anglers and handing out citations where needed.
Past and Future
Dr. Meagan Kruppa, now a researcher at the University of California Santa Barbara, wrote her dissertation on the evolution of the creek, its salmon and its people.
The anglers who fish here today probably don’t reflect on the role this creek has had at the core of Anchorage’s history, or that it has changed drastically in the past century.
Kruppa is a student of people and salmon. Her current project is analyzing the massive data reflecting every action taken by the Alaska Board of Fish since it’s inception, to identify trends in fishery policy. It’s basic work that’s never been done, in Alaska or any other state.
“I want to get to the root cause of these fish wars…what really going on…It struck me, makes so much sense, but frustrating, how much focus there is on allocation, and not on keeping fish around.”
Ship Creek holds a unique place in Alaska, Kruppa said.
“It’s a diverse fishery. You see people feeding their families, rich guys in suites, railroad guys. It is so different from say the Kenai.”
“It’s the People’s Fishery,” she laughed.
The creek was first a Deni’ana trading post, before the first tents of the railroad camp that grew into the Anchorage of today.
“Originally Ship Creek had all five species of salmon, in relatively small numbers. It was extremely curvy, like an S-shaped river, using the flood plain and winding down from government hill. It used that whole area, back and forth, and the saltwater influence was further upstream. Sockeye salmon travel up to Ship Lake and spawned there.
“It was a much different river in the early 1900s. When Anchorage formed on the banks of Ship Creek, it started to gradually become what you see today.
“There was a formal effort as the railroad came in, laid tracks down and needed to control the river. They made it deeper, narrower, faster, which also erodes the banks quicker. The Railroad is still fighting the erosion process to this day.”
It’s not commonly known that the property surrounding the creek belongs to the Alaska State Railroad, not Anchorage. That creates an ongoing diversion in how the creek is managed.
Legend is, for example, that when Fish and Game made early plans to build the first state fish hatchery on the creek, thinking it was an excellent site for a hatchery, the railroad was opposed, not wanting to deal with controlling people on their land.
The hatchery went forward anyway, and the rest is history! And some say, laid the groundwork for conflict that continues between ADF&G and the Railroad to this day.
After the hatchery began production and more salmon started returning to the creek, fishermen took notice. The first sport fishing opener on the creek was 1970. And fishing pressure grew with increasing salmon returns.
With construction of the Hernandez Hatchery in 2011, with dramatically more capacity and better control of water temperature, production of king and silver salmon, and rainbow trout, increased dramatically. Fry and fingerlings produced at the Hernandez Hatchery are stocked throughout Southcentral Alaska.
Kruppa’s own children learned to fish on Ship Creek, she said.
Biologists will say off the record that the creek is a sacrificial fishery, that they directed people there to take the pressure off other fisheries and especially wild runs elsewhere.
‘It was the same with Bird Creek,” Kruppa said. “One year they had extra fish, put them in Bird and created a fishery, and then DOT had to create parking and deal with the traffic.
“So ADF&G has something of a love-hate relationship with hatcheries.”
There’s international questions today about whether hatcheries are overloading the oceans, exceeding their carrying capacity. But that’s a question for another story.
“Ship creek is both an amazing and accessible fishery and a cautionary tale,” Kruppa said. “You have to decide, if you want to have this fishery, to put in the infrastructure to support it. The walkways, the restrooms, the garbage cans. You can’t create it without infrastructure.”
Many of those improvements, as part of the Kings Landing project on the creek, are now complete.
“People learn how to appreciate fish there, have that connection. After all, who has the money to fly (someplace remote) to fish?”
Kruppa says Ship Creek is an important lesson for all Alaska fisheries.
“Call it The Alaska Exception…the idea that somehow we can do everything that everybody else did, but not lose our salmon like they did.
“Ship creek reminds us that we can lose our fish, and it doesn’t take a long time to do that. Everything that destroyed salmon in Europe and in the lower 48 can happen in, by for example blocking sockeye runs to lakes.”
Kruppa says the opposition to big resource development projects has totally missed the point.
“What salmon history globally has shown is that it’s death by a thousand tiny cuts. It is zoning regulations that destroy salmon—little decisions that are not making the connection between salmon and cold clear connected water.”
It’s important that managers understand there’s no turning back the clock on Ship Creek, she said.
“There’s no turning back now. The best you can do is make it a really nice place, somewhere that people want to go, learn about salmon, advocate for sport fishing.”
This story first appeared in Fish Alaska magazine. Lee Leschper is a lifelong outdoor writer, now living in Anchorage and fishing Ship Creek every day he can. He is publisher of AlaskaOutdoorDigest.com.
William Jack Hernandez Sport Fish Hatchery
The William Jack Hernandez Sport Fish Hatchery was completed in June of 2011. It is a fully enclosed, recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) based facility uses the best available technology to conserve water and reduce heating demand to produce Chinook and Coho salmon, rainbow trout, and Arctic char.
There is space for production of more than 6 million sport fish each year. These fingerlings, fry and smolt are released throughout South Central Alaska from Cordova to Kodiak, Homer, Kenai, Seward, Anchorage, Mat/Su and Talkeetna. Sport fishing activity supported through these fish releases accounts for over $20 million a year in economic impact on local communities.
The hatchery is open to the public 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and includes educational displays and meeting space.
The hatchery is named for William Jack “Bill” Hernandez, who served his country during WWII, was captured by the Japanese on Wake Island and spent three years as a prisoner of war.
After the war as a wildlife officer in the U.S. Army stationed at Fort Richardson, he lead the effort for the first fish hatchery on the base. After retiring from military service, he worked at several Alaska fish hatcheries as a fish culturist including the Richardson and Elmendorf hatcheries. The hatchery is named in his honor to recognize the huge contributions he made to sport and commercial fishing in Alaska.
