Don't Put Your Fishwheel In Too Early. Follow The Wisdom Of The Elders

 

COPPER RIVER COMMENTARY

Wait Until The Fish Hit The Headwaters Of The Copper River To Protect Salmon 

The late Fred Ewan of Gulkana Village, with a salmon for the smokehouse. (Journal archives, 1990s) 

BY BRUCE CAIN, GLENNALLEN  

In regards to the Federal Subsistence fishery opening date of May 15 instead of June 1...

This was brought forward years ago because some people caught a salmon or two before the June 1 opening and got cited.  A proposal was put in and the Federal season opening was moved to May 15, two weeks before the State season.  

The Ahtna people knew how to regulate this early season. You only caught 1 or two to have an early fish to stave off starvation in some years or to just have a fresh salmon.  No one ever did any serious fishing to put up winter food because everyone knew these early fish had to go up river to Mentasta and Batzulnetas.  I remember Robert Marshall speaking against the proposal because he said that we needed to let those early fish go for the up river people and to maintain the early run strength.  He knew that once the regulation was put in that "Federally Qualified Subsistence Users" included a lot more people than Ahtna people and that they would not know or follow the traditional early season rules.  

As predicted, what you see today is people putting in fish wheels and more substantially getting Chitina dipnet permits and going to Haley Creek the furthest downriver point and the most harmful place to open an early fishery.  I have talked to these people.  They are locals by regulation but there are lots of them.  

They say they like to go early when the crowds aren't there and they are fishing to "Fill Their Freezers" which is another term that I don't think belongs in a traditional fishery.  People fish to feed their families.  Filling a freezer is just waste a lot of times as the fish sit all winter and are not used and then are disposed of because you have to "Fill Your Freezer" again.  So I wait till June 1 to put my wheel in.  The first fish are to be given away and after the run progresses and starts to peak is when the heavy fishing for winter preservation, drying, canning and freezing start for me.  

If I were king, I would change this rule and put in some traditional guidelines into the regulations and I would limit the take to 1 or two salmon a day From May 15 to June 1 on that early part and explain in the regulation book that this is to allow an early fish or two but to let the early run go by.  It is not a very large run and is very vulnerable and depended upon by up river villages.  It is not to harvest your winter supply on when there are many more fish that will show up in the lower river runs.