Kenai’s annual Silver Salmon Derby will not return this year in response to poor silver salmon runs in the Kenai River. The Kenai Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center, which hosts the competition each year, announced the decision Thursday. This year’s derby was scheduled to happen the second week of September.
The annual event is billed as the world’s most responsible fishing tournament. That’s because it awards prizes based on a fish weight that is closest to a random number. That’s instead of awarding the biggest fish caught, which organizers say can incentivize harmful catch-and-release strategies.
In the chamber’s announcement, Executive Director Samantha Springer said the decision to cancel the derby was difficult, but aligns with the competition’s commitment to responsible fishing.
“When we don't have enough information to feel confident about the strength and consistency of the silver salmon return, we believe the responsible choice for our organization is to err on the side of the fishery,” Springer says in the release.
The announcement came the same day the Alaska Department of Fish and Game extended limits on the Kenai River silver salmon sport fishery. Traditionally, the fishery bag limit increases from two large fish to three large fish on Sept. 1. The department is keeping the limit to two fish through the end of November.
Like the derby, the department says its decision is due to a below-average silver run. The state says that indicates weak returns to Cook Inlet.
Patrick Fowler is a fisheries management coordinator for the state. He says the department does count the Kenai River’s coho run the same way it counts other salmon species, like king and sockeye. Instead, Fowler says they use several data points to determine when a run may be lower than usual.
Fowler says the combination of data points suggest this year’s silver salmon run is stronger than in 2024, but weaker than last year.
“It is difficult science to be able to conclude why a given coho salmon return is larger or smaller due to the complex life history of coho salmon, but what I would offer is that the run strength that we are seeing this year is within the range of what we have observed across time,” Fowler said via email.
In the press release, the chamber says it will consider hosting the 2027 derby earlier in the year.
Thursday’s announcement comes on the heels of a lackluster sockeye season in the Kenai River, and as the river’s king fishery remains closed outright due to poor runs.
On Aug. 10, the last day the state counted fish for Kenai River late-run sockeye, a little over a million fish had been counted. That’s lower than the cumulative counts for each of the last four years, and about a quarter of how many were counted during last year’s record season.
