Alaska Department of Fish and Game

Sockeye salmon are forecasted to return somewhat stronger this year in the Upper Cook Inlet. But the forecast comes as state fisheries managers have closed King salmon sport fishing and the east side set net fishery altogether this summer, amid a continuing trend of declining runs in the region.

An estimated 675 Kenai Peninsula students participated in two days of ice fishing as part of Fish and Game's salmon in the classroom program.

The Alaska Board of Game will be meeting in Soldotna later this month to consider proposed changes to hunting and trapping regulations around the Kenai Peninsula — including several for the Homer area.

The tall, flightless birds are a surprising source of meat, categorized as poultry. An Anchor Point man named Pike Ainsworth worked for three years to add emus to the state's so-called Clean List of legal live game.

Dozens of students oohed and aahed on a cold morning in Anchor Point as biologists spawned a pair of coho salmon and fertilized their eggs. It was the first lesson in the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s annual “Salmon in the Classroom” program, which teaches Kenai Peninsula students about salmon biology in their classrooms throughout the school year.

There’s a special “youth-only” fishing opener on the Homer Spit this Saturday. A portion of the Nick Dudiak Fishing Lagoon will be open from 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. for youth anglers age 15 years and younger looking to catch coho salmon.

A record number of sockeye salmon passed through the sonar on the Kasilof River on Wednesday. About 125,628 sockeye were recorded at the sonar there — a new daily record for the run, according to Brian Marston, Alaska Department of Fish and Game's area manager for Upper Cook Inlet commercial fisheries. The surge brings the sockeye run on the Kasilof to 568,703 fish this run.

Fishing for kings on the Kenai River is again off limits this month. It’s the third year in a row the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has closed the fishery early amid low king salmon counts.The closure also means set-netters who fish the east side of Cook Inlet are no longer allowed to fish this season. Their fishery closes when king counts are down.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game anticipates sockeye salmon in the Kasilof River will exceed the department’s escapement goals for the run and is increasing how many sockeye anglers can take, effective Thursday.

Bristol Bay's Nushagak District broke its record for the largest single-day harvest. Fisherfolk caught 2.46 million salmon on Thursday. That’s about 600,000 fish over last year’s record daily harvest, which was set last year. The district had back-to-back record harvests exactly one year ago, when fleets caught 1.7 million on June 30 and 1.82 million on July 1.