House OKs higher hunting, fishing fees

Bagging brown bears, moose will get costly for non-residents

The Alaska House voted 33-7 Wednesday on a bill to increase hunting and fishing license fees as a way to raise revenue for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

House Bill 137 is the first significant change to resident hunting and fishing fees in 24 years and the first significant change to nonresident fees in 17 years, lead sponsor Rep. Dave Talerico, R-Healy, said Wednesday.

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TOUGH TIMES FOR KENAI RIVER GUIDES

Kenai River (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From the Peninsula Clarion...

Bruce Ewitt guided on the Kenai River for 11 years before he quit after the 2012 fishing season and shifted his efforts toward king salmon returning to the Columbia River.

He joined the ranks of sportfishing guides, nearly 100 since 2007, who have stopped guiding on the Kenai River a trend that other guides say could be indicative of future river use.

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Questions remain over counts after shift to high-tech sonar

In the continuing saga of Kenai River king salmon management during the current period of low abundance, counting the number of fish coming into the river with enough accuracy to satisfy competing users has been a difficult task for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Researchers are dealing with new, high-tech sonar counters they hope will meet the inherent challenge of finding and counting a few king salmon swimming along with thousands of sockeye salmon.

They are also faced with the task of communicating the subtleties of an increasingly complex system to a public upset by departmental missteps such as the 2012 closure of king salmon anglers and Cook Inlet setnetters due to what managers believed were dangerously low numbers of fish.

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