By Jacqueline McDonough

For the Homer Independent Press


On Saturday dozens of boats will converge on Kachemak Bay in a quest to land the biggest Chinook salmon. About 1,000 anglers will come from the lower Kenai Peninsula, Anchorage and farther — but what about the fish? Many people wonder where these winter king salmon hail from, and how this fishery is sustainable, especially with so many Alaska stocks in decline. 

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the winter king fishery and the one-day Winter King Salmon Tournament have no significant impact on the populations that return to Cook Inlet to spawn. As Area Management Biologist Mike Booz explains, “Because this is a mixed stock fishery, with fish from everywhere throughout the Pacific Northwest, there’s no real conservation concern.” 

However, there is enough concern about the dwindling late run of the Kenai River Chinook that a new project to understand their saltwater movement will commence this weekend. And this new look for the iconic Kenai kings may also shed light on the mixed stocks that ply the winter waters of Lower Cook Inlet.

Booz and fellow Fish and Game researcher Sara Gilk-Baumer are leading the new study, which will continue through August of this year. Gilk-Baumer is the director of ADF&G’s Gene Conservation Laboratory, which has recently refined a Chinook salmon dataset of genetic markers corresponding to known spawning locations.


In order to understand where the kings moving through Lower Cook Inlet are originally from, scientists will analyze the genetic signature of kings caught each day as sportfishermen return to the Homer Harbor. Technicians will sample a bit of the pelvic fin tissue from up to 100 fish every week, collecting a genetic fingerprint or clue to where each fish hatched and the river it was intending to return to.

King salmon, also known as Chinooks, emerge and spend their first year in select freshwater tributaries, such as those pouring into the Cook Inlet basin. They then spend one to five years in the ocean, feeding on herring, candlefish and sandlance, and growing to maturity before returning to their natal streams to spawn. The ocean-bright king salmon that are found in Kachemak Bay each month of the winter are called “feeder” kings, as they are taking advantage of the baitfish in these nutrient-rich waters.

So what is already known about where these winter kings come from? An earlier study conducted by Fish and Game researchers from 2014-2018 sampled fish caught by local volunteers through the winter and during two tournaments. Using genetics, they discovered that fewer than 1% of the winter kings in their samples originated in Cook Inlet. 

“It’s primarily southern stocks contributing to the harvest here,” said Booz. “The vast majority of the fish are from the places that stock the most.”

This study also relied on coded wire tags to determine exact places of origin for a smaller subsample of fish. These tags work almost like bands on birds, except that they are tiny numbered wires that can be attached to a juvenile salmon’s nasal cartilage, often at release from a hatchery. The location-specific codes pointed to more than 100 release locations for non-local stocks. Three quarters of the marked winter kings caught in lower Cook Inlet had been tagged as juveniles in British Columbia. A smaller percent had migrated from Oregon and Washington; less than 4% of the fish sampled were from Alaska. 

The stocks of kings are so mixed in their winter feeding waters, that even when the catch from one boat in a single day is examined, anglers would have “coded wire-tagged fish from multiple locations, and they’re caught at the same time, same place,” said Booz.

Understanding the composition of the stocks moving through lower Cook Inlet is vital for managing the late summer run of Kenai River Chinooks, which has been designated a stock of concern by the Alaska Board of Fisheries. The Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission funded the new sampling project through federal fishery disaster relief for that Kenai River population. However, a more detailed examination of which stocks are moving through lower Cook Inlet will provide information about more local fish as well, which may be under stronger fishing pressure with the closing of sport fisheries farther north.

“The big difference from the last study to this one is that our genetics data is updated a little bit more. The analyses will be even more refined,” Booz said. The technology has improved to the level where an early-run Kenai king can be differentiated from a late-run Kenai king. 

The other difference in the new study is that it comes after years of disappointing runs on the upper and lower Kenai Peninsula.

“For us here, we’ve been very fortunate to have this mixed stock fishery — and our enhancements like Seldovia or the Dudiak Lagoon or the Ninilchik River — because by and large we still have plenty of king salmon harvest opportunity here in Homer, where other places just up the road don’t,” Booz said. “ We get asked, how is that still open when we’re closed here. We need to assess the stock composition of this harvest under this more current structure. When we did that [study] before, that was a little blip of decent productivity of Cook Inlet stocks — there were actually freshwater fisheries open during that period throughout Cook Inlet. Now they’re all closed. It’s important to reassess the composition because it might likely be different.”

With the two-fold delay in scheduling the tournament due to harbor ice, biologists will have their first ever opportunity to sample a good number of king salmon from lower Cook Inlet in the shoulder month of April. While April is technically within the summer season according to regulations, it will still allow scientists to gather information on fish that feed in the saltwater off the Spit through the wintertime.

Though the winter king fishery is small and subject to challenging weather, Booz stresses its importance to the local community, where each fish is prized and often shared with neighbors. 

“It’s not that we’re intending to fill our freezers with king salmon with this fishery,” he said. “The weather comes and goes, the prevalence of the fish comes and goes, but it’s a good opportunity to go out and get a fish or two.”