Subsistence Board acts on Southeast fisheries proposals

At its Jan. 21-23 meeting in Anchorage, the Federal Subsistence Board opted to take action on proposed changes to federal subsistence fishing regulations. Statewide, a definition of hooks was added to allow those with or without barbs. For Southeast, the board opted to close federal waters to non-federally qualified users in the Makhnati Island area to the harvest of herring and herring spawn. It also will require that nets be checked twice a day on the Stikine River and eliminated the subsistence sockeye salmon annual guideline harvest level on the river, pending consideration by the Transboundary River Panel and the Pacific Salmon Commission. For the Kuskokwim area, the board added dipnets as an authorized gear type for the harvest of salmon. In the Cook Inlet area, the use of a single gillnet each was approved for the Ninilchik community for use on the Kasilof and Kenai rivers. All changes take effect April 1 and will be published in the 2015-17 subsistence fishing regulation book, available in March.