Just three days after announcing the Ketchikan king salmon derby would return after a three-year absence, organizers reversed course and said there will be no derby next month.
Organizers had planned for two weekends of derby fishing — June 18-20 and June 25-27 — but the Alaska Department of Fish and Game thought that would be a bad idea, considering low king stocks in the area.
The department’s sport fish division called the event organizer on May 11 with the bad news. “They expressed some concerns with the idea of basically encouraging 1,000 boats across a couple of weekends to go out there and target king salmon,” said Michael Briggs, who coordinates the event for Ketchikan’s Cabaret, Hotel, Restaurant and Retailers Association, during an interview with the community’s public radio station KRBD.
The derby had been a 70-year tradition until 2018, when concerns about low wild king salmon stocks in the region prompted the state to curtail the sport harvest of kings through mid-June. Ketchikan held derbies for silver salmon in 2018 and 2019, but even that was canceled last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Wrangell king salmon derby also was canceled 2018-2020 but, unlike Ketchikan, the event has not been pulled for this year — as of Tuesday. The Wrangell Chamber of Commerce is planning to run the town’s 66th king salmon derby June 15-30.
Briggs said community interest prompted the try to bring back the Ketchikan derby.
“After the heartbreak of not having a tournament at all in 2020, we thought it might be appropriate to go ahead and return it to its roots a little bit,” Briggs told the Ketchikan Daily News the week before the cancellation. “We’re not fishing three weekends, just the two, and so hopefully it won’t impact king stocks too much — (and) still allow everybody to get out there and get some fishing in.”
In a statement to KRBD, state fisheries biologist Kelly Reppert said the same problem that led organizers to cancel the king derby in 2018 still exists in 2021: poor stocks of wild kings.
“There is more concern in 2021 for the Behm Canal wild stocks than in 2018 when the derby was first canceled,” Reppert said. And king salmon on the Unuk River north of Ketchikan have been a “stock of concern” for the department since 2017, Reppert said.
Too few kings are escaping the fishery into nearby Chickamin River as well. She said the river has missed its escapement goal four of the past five years.
Briggs said he understands the concerns of fisheries managers. “We certainly … don’t want to do anything to impact those stocks. We want to be able to continue fishing for king salmon around here for a long time.”
He said he hopes for a silver salmon derby late summer, though planning is in the early stages.
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