It was the last day of the dipnetting season at the mouth of the Kenai River, and dozens of Alaskans were standing waist deep in the tide with large nets in their hands. Salmon were literally jumping out of the water around them.
Jessica Parker, from Anchorage, and her group of three caught forty salmon in just two hours. She fileted them, in a line, on shore. She said they’ve never caught this many in a single tide before.
“This is pretty incredible," Parker said. "We had to tell ourselves to stop, because the processing was so much work.”
Just up the beach, Freddie Samaniego of Palmer emerged from the waves with his dipnet. He counted not one, not two, but three sockeye tangled in the mesh.
“It’s been a great and awesome day, but like, I haven't gotten less than a two, and this is the second triple," Samaniego said. "But yeah, pretty epic day.”
Samaniego caught 18 sockeye in about 45 minutes.
That’s because the Kenai River saw the highest number of sockeye escapement this summer since the Alaska Department of Fish and Game began tracking those numbers in 1987. Since July 1, the department’s sonar sockeye tracker has counted over 4 million salmon swimming up the lower Kenai River.
“The sockeye run this year for the Kenai River has been phenomenal,” said Phillip Stacey, Fish and Game’s sport fish area manager for the northern Kenai Peninsula. “We've had multiple days over 240,000 coming into the river.”
The number of sockeye in the river was more than double what it was last summer. From July 16 to August 5 of this year, the department’s sonar tracker counted over 100,000 sockeye each day.
Stacey credits the record-breaking sockeye counts to several factors.
One: ocean conditions have been favorable in recent years. That means more food availability.
Two: Cook Inlet’s east side setnet fishery, which briefly reopened this month, has been closed since 2022 to protect declining king salmon returns.
Stacey said the king salmon restrictions could be letting more sockeye into the Kenai River.
“So these fish are coming off of undisturbed runs and returns from three to five years ago,” he said.
And this year’s sockeye runs could be an indicator for next year’s.
Stacey said sockeye usually spend about a year in freshwater, like lakes, then up to three years in salt water. He says the number of two year old sockeye in the river this year may correlate to the number of three year old sockeye that return next year.
“With the number of fish that we have, I would say that we're going to be looking at another big run next year,” Stacey said.
Stacey said it's not just the number of sockeye in the river this year that are breaking records. He suspects the number of people fishing for those sockeye were also high.
While his department won’t have the data until next year, he says anecdotally his Soldotna office was way busier than normal with people obtaining licenses and dipnetting permits.
“I am just excited to see that there are so many people coming down to utilize the resource and try and fill their freezers,” Stacey says.
Although dipnetting on the Kenai Peninsula is closed for the season, anglers can still fish for salmon on the Kenai River with a rod and reel.
For more information or to obtain a fishing licence, visit the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s website.
