Alaska salmon restrictions affect sport anglers

Alaska-bound anglers (July is a big month for sockeye and late kings) may want to check on their destinations before packing along empty coolers to bring fish home.

A significant downturn in returning chinook salmon numbers has caused numerous closures and bag restrictions in South Central and Southeast Alaska streams and rivers. Some sockeye runs are also affected, although not as many as with chinook.
Most Alaska coho runs begin in mid-July and last through early September.

Check out a partial list on the Northwest's largest angling Web site.

More specifics are on the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Web site.

Typically, when runs are good into the Columbia and other Pacific Northwest rivers, Alaska runs drop a bit.

That's due to changes in Pacific Ocean currents that drive abundance at the base of the food chain. The currents press southward to the Northwest Coast instead of washing across Alaska and northern British Columbia.

This year's drop, however, is more of a plummet and biologists are scratching their heads about the reasons.

Jim Martin, retired Oregon chief of fisheries and conservation director for Pure Fishing Inc., a sportfishing tackle company, said many scientists suspect global climate changes have altered the North Pacific Ocean significantly enough that when Alaska's baby salmon move out from their home rivers to rear at sea, the ocean hasn't reached its abundant cycle (diatoms, plankton, etc.) and thus there isn't enough for them to eat.

It will be a few years before more is known and a few- to many-decades before the resilient salmon adjust to the ocean's new timing, however it turns out.
http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/oregoni...ctions_aff.html