Ship Creek silver limit goes up to six fish

The good to great season on downtown Anchorage’s favorite fishery continues, as ADF&G announced Friday that the daily limit on silvers in Ship Creek goes to six per day.

It’s been a strong year of fishing and salmon runs on Ship Creek, with a good June run of king salmon followed by a great run of silvers, mixed with huge numbers of pink and chum salmon.  The limit increase is based not necessarily on great fishing now, but on the upstream hatchery having met its escapement goal for the year, with no need for more silvers to meet the spawning requirements for the hatchery.

Fishermen are reporting new bright silvers continuing to enter the creek on each incoming tide, much as strong runs have continued into most of the MatSu Valley rivers in the past two weeks.

Here’s the full release:

Effective 5:00 p.m. on Friday, August 25, 2017, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is increasing the bag and possession limit for coho salmon, 16 inches or greater in length, to six per day in Ship Creek from its mouth upstream to a cable 100 feet downstream of the Chugach Power Plant dam.

A stream survey conducted on Ship Creek on August 23, 2017, counted over 1,600 coho salmon upstream of the fishery. The escapement above the Chugach Power Plant dam will meet the William Jack Hernandez Sport Fish Hatchery’s coho salmon brood stock goal and allow for some natural spawning in Ship Creek; therefore, it is warranted to increase the coho salmon bag and possession limit in the section open to salmon fishing to allow for increased harvest of surplus hatchery fish.

“With each tide there are still plenty of nice looking coho coming into Ship Creek and since it looks like we are going to meet our hatchery and natural spawning needs, let’s go fishing” said Brittany Blain-Roth, Anchorage Sport Fisheries Assistant Area Manager. Please remember that a foul-hooked or snagged fish, a fish hooked elsewhere than in the mouth, needs to remain in the water and be released immediately. A coho salmon 16 inches or longer that is removed from the water must be retained and becomes part of the bag limit of the person who originally hooked the fish.

For more information, please contact Anchorage Area Management Biologist Jay Baumer at (907) 267-2265, Brittany Blain-Roth at (907) 267-2186, or the Sport Fish Information Center at (907) 267-2218.