FISHERIES

On the Hook!

A roster of sports fish in Alaska’s Interior

By Alexandra Kay

Homer has its halibut, the Kenai its kings, Bristol Bay is famous for its sockeye, and Southeast harvests herring. Far from Alaska’s 6,640 miles of coastline, though, anglers find plenty of opportunities for sport fishing. The Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G) counts an average of nearly 102,000 resident angler days each year in the Arctic/ Yukon/Kuskokwim region, plus more than 44,000 non-resident angler days. And they’re not snagging salmon—at least, they have plenty of other options. Region III, which encompasses about 80 percent of the state, is home to thirty-seven freshwater and brackish water fish species, of which several are targeted as sport fish.

There’s burbot, referred to as the poor man’s lobster, an eel-looking fish with mottled skin ranging from black to gray to olive or even yellow. It’s popular with sport fishers mainly for its flavor. It is the only freshwater species of cod, which may be why it’s so good to eat. Unlike other freshwater fish, burbot spawn in midto-late winter, which makes them active during ice fishing season. “A lot of people use set lines for burbot in the winter,” says Andrew Gryska, Tanana area biologist for ADF&G. A relatively long-lived and slow-growing fish, burbot typically average three to five pounds, with some fish getting up to about eight pounds, which is not uncommon in the Yukon and

Andy Gryska | ADF&G

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Tanana rivers. Burbot live in rivers, both clear and glacial, and in many lakes throughout Alaska, but not in Southeast. The largest burbot sport fisheries occur in the Tanana River and lakes in the upper Tanana, Upper Copper, and Upper Susitna river drainages.

Sheefish, the largest member of the whitefish family, can travel up to 1,000 miles in a year looking for food, spawning sites, and spots to overwinter. Found in large northern rivers and lakes, sheefish are large white or silver colored fish without spots or other markings and have a lower jaw that extends beyond the upper one and a mouth full of small, densely packed teeth. “Sometimes called the tarpon of the north, sheefish are big and aggressive,” says Brendan Scanlon, Northwest and North Slope area biologist for the ADF&G Division of Sport Fish. “The state record for one is fifty-three pounds, and there are several places where you can catch fifteen- to thirty-pound fish pretty easily.” Sheefish can grow more than 3 feet long and spawn multiple times over their thirty-year lifespan. “The Native population does a lot of sheefish fishing, and those are more found in the Northwestern Interior more than the Central Interior,” says ADF&G spokesman Tim Mowry. “We do have them in local rivers but not as abundant as some of the other rivers farther up.”

Some Lesser-caught Fish

Least cisco is a slender, medium-sized fish that gets up to about 19 inches long and is generally caught via spearfishing, says Gryska. It’s typically brownish to dark black with silvery sides and belly. They can be found in the Yukon and Kuskokwim River drainages as well as in most lakes and streams north of the Alaska Range and from the Arctic coast to Bristol Bay.

Humpback whitefish is distinguished from other whitefishes by the hump behind the head of the adult fish. It’s a medium-sized fish that can grow to about 26 inches long. Another spearfishing fish, it’s typically dark brown to midnight blue dorsally, fades to silver on its sides, and has a white belly. It can be found throughout several water bodies within the Yukon River, Kuskokwim River, Tanana River, Kvichak River, Susitna River, Copper River drainages, as well as the Alsek River near Yakutat. Humpback

whitefish have been known to spawn under ice in the Kuskokwim River as late as mid-November.

Broad whitefish is, well, broader than other whitefish species. It has an elongated body and silvery scales and typically weighs up to eleven pounds. It can be found in Alaska’s freshwater drainages of the Bering Sea, including the Yukon and Kuskokwim, and the drainages of the Chukchi Sea and the Arctic Ocean. Broad whitefish is generally spearfished and is an important subsistence fish in Alaska.

Round whitefish have rounded cigarlike bodies and pointed snouts. These fish rarely exceed 24 inches in length. They inhabit almost every type of river and freshwater habitat north of the Alaska Range.

The Grand Slam

The poster child for sportfishing in Alaska is the Dolly Varden, currently the featured image on the main page of the ADF&G website. Unless it’s a picture of an Arctic char; the twin species are very similar to each other, and both are related to salmon. Dolly Varden are found everywhere in Alaska, says Scanlon, but “the biggest are found in the north and west part of the state.” They live in coastal areas and in streams in the Interior and the Brooks Range. There are two types of Dolly Varden in Alaska, a southern form and a northern form, which can get much larger, and they vary in color depending on age and habitat. Dolly Varden, named for a Charles Dickens character who wore a bright printed dress, can grow to more than 30 inches in length and weigh up to twenty-seven pounds, which is the state record. “They’re really interesting,” notes Scanlon. “They go to sea and come back, but they don’t spawn and die like salmon do. They live to spawn several times over their lifetime.”

Arctic char are the northernmost freshwater fish in the world. They are somewhat larger than Dolly Varden and have fewer and larger spots. They vary in color depending on the time of year and their environmental conditions and can grow up to 38 inches long and weigh up to thirty pounds. They spawn annually or every other year, and when spawning their lower body and lower fins are orange to red in color, with males more colorful than females.

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Andy Gryska | ADF&G

An Arctic grayling, the most widely found fish in Alaska’s interior.

Andy Gryska | ADF&G Arctic char are found in lakes in the Brooks Range, the Kigluaik Mountains north of Nome, the Kuskokwim Mountains, the Alaska Peninsula, Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak Island, and in a small area of Interior Alaska near Denali Park. ADF&G does not consider Arctic char as important a sport fish as Dolly Varden, which has greater numbers across a wider area.

Rainbow trout is another salmon cousin that anglers prize for its fighting ability. While they occur naturally in the fresh waters of Upper Cook Inlet, the Kenai Peninsula, on Kodiak Island, and in the Copper River drainage, they’re hatchery-reared in other places in the state. “What sets the Interior apart is we don’t have native stocks of rainbow trout,” says Mowry. “All of the rainbow trout is stocked by our fisheries.” In 2012, a hatchery was built in Fairbanks, and those fish are used to stock more than 120 lakes in the Interior several times a year. There are two kinds of rainbow trout in Alaska: a streamresident type that lives entirely in freshwater with maybe short periods in estuarine or near-shore marine waters, and steelhead, which migrate to the ocean to mature before returning to their home waters. Rainbow trout get their name from a reddish stripe along their sides, blending with their bluegreen dorsal sides and silvery bellies, though exact coloration depends on habitat, age, and sex. Trout also have small black spots covering their backs, upper fins, and tails. In the Interior, stocked rainbow trout rarely exceed 20 inches long.

Lake trout are closely related to rainbow trout and similar in shape, but their coloration is different: irregularlyshaped yellow or cream spots on a dark background. Lake trout typically grow to about twenty-five pounds, but they can be larger—the current record is fortyseven pounds. Lake trout are broadly distributed in northern and southern Alaska, but they are not found in the Yukon River basin. Unlike rainbow trout, lake trout spawn in the fall rather than spring, and these fish can live a long time. “Some of our oldest fish on the North Slope can be fifty years old,” says Scanlon, and ADF&G has recorded one individual that lived for sixty-two years. In deep, cold lakes, there’s a chance to catch a really large lake trout.

Andy Gryska | ADF&G

Arctic grayling is the most widely found fish in Alaska’s interior. “They’re well-adapted to the situations here,” says Gryska. It’s this species that attracts so many of Alaska’s anglers, both those from within the state and those who travel to fly fish for the species known as the sailfish of the north. Relatives of salmon that never leave freshwater, Arctic grayling can live for more than thirty years and grow up to two feet in length and weigh just over five pounds. Its most distinctive feature is a large, sail-like dorsal fin. According to ADF&G, fly fishers won’t find Arctic grayling in Southeast Alaska or Kodiak Island (unless it’s stocked) or in the Aleutians, but it has the largest natural range of any sport fish and occupies nearly the whole mainland.

The only non-salmonid among the top inland sport fish, northern pike can be found in the Yukon, Tanana, and Kuskokwim rivers and all the way to the Arctic coast, from the Canadian border to the Seward Peninsula and southwest to the Bristol Bay drainages. “Northern pike are a voracious fish,” says Mowry. “They like to eat, so they’re always foraging, and people can catch big pike here.” Mowry says illegally stocked Northern pike have become a pest in some areas of the state, but that’s not the case in the Interior. Sometimes called a water wolf, northern pike have an elongated body and head, a broad snout shaped somewhat like a duck bill, and many sharp teeth which are constantly replaced. It has a single, soft-rayed dorsal fin located far back on its body. A northern pike can grow for twenty years, reaching four feet in length and up to forty pounds, with the female growing larger than the male.

Along with the five species of Pacific salmon, these six fish are considered the Grand Slam for Alaska fishermen. Anyone who catches a Dolly Varden, Arctic char, rainbow trout, lake trout, Arctic grayling, and northern pike, as well as a king, silver, red, pink, and chum salmon has achieved the summit of Alaska sport fishing. Crystal Creek Lodge in King Salmon advertises a week-long package during a window in July when all eleven species are present in the region, and any guest who achieves a Grand Slam within that week is duly honored.

Less ambitious anglers can be satisfied knowing that Alaska’s 3,000 streams and 3 million lakes, far from saltwater, offer a lifetime supply of worthy opponents.

Alaska Native Corporations

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was signed late in 1971 and paved the way for Alaska Native regional, village, and urban corporations to organize. While 2021 saw the 50th anniversary of the act itself, many of the corporations that were the result of the legislation date their creation anywhere from 1972 to 1974—and a few even later, as some early corporations merged to better meet the needs of their shareholders.

Considering the time and energy devoted to crafting the landmark act, it’s fitting to celebrate it and the corporations for more than one year.

One of the corporations celebrating half a century of operations in 2022 is Calista Corporation, whose land entitlement in the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta comprises 6.5 million acres, approximately 10 percent of Alaska’s entire land area and roughly equivalent in size to the state of New York. Most of this land is “split estate,” an arrangement in which Calista has rights to the subsurface estate and each of the fiftysix villages in the region has rights to the surface.

It's been leveraging those lands, in addition to its allocation of funds from ANCSA, to see some phenomenal growth in five decades.

After fifty years, Calista is celebrating several significant milestones: in 2022 the corporation reached a total lifetime distribution of $100 million in dividends to its shareholders, and in 2021 the corporation had record revenue and profits, “which was pretty good in terms of the challenges we faced during the pandemic,” according to President and CEO Andrew Guy. At Calista, Guy explains, “We’re a pretty team-focused company, so a lot of our workers are encouraged to—and do— work as a team.” When the pandemic hit, the corporation focused on keeping a team approach while physically separated and teleworking.

Calista saw an opportunity in learning how to work differently during the pandemic, so it plans to keep a hybrid approach to its workspaces. “We know a lot of our employees do more and are more productive teleworking without office distractions,” Guy says, “but we still have projects where we need employees to be there [in the office], so we will continue to do both.”

The corporation plans to build on the success it has already found, and Guy says it has recently acquired three new companies to continue its expansion in the tech market. “We continue to expand the areas that we know that we’re good at, and

that’s what we’ll be doing this year,” he says.

Calista is just one highlight among many when surveying ANCSA corporations and Alaska Native businesses. Updates on all twelve of the regional corporations and many of the village corporations can be found in the following pages. Beyond the ANCSA corporations, many Alaska Native individuals have taken great strides, as well, such as Hope Roberts, founder and owner of Surreel Saltwaters, who describes her journey to find a place in business and in her culture in “Marine Mammal Huntress.” She of course is not alone in her efforts to maintain Alaska Native culture, and in “Preserving Alaska Native Languages” we explore what’s being done to keep traditional Alaska dialects active.

Our special section also looks at Alaska Native corporations in the construction industry in “Solid Foundations.” In part because of the Small Business Administration 8(a) program, which allows minority-owned companies to participate in set-aside and solesource government contracting, the construction industry has been a launching point for many ANCSA corporation subsidiaries. In fact, every one of the twelve regional corporations has a connection to this industry, as do many of the village and urban corporations.

And finally, “One City, Two Capitals” looks at the efforts of Sealaska Heritage Institute to perpetuate the Indigenous cultures of the Panhandle and establish Juneau as the capital of Northwest Coast art.

Across the board, when we reach out to Alaska Native corporations, small business owners, and nonprofit organizations, we get reports on growth. As we take stock of fifty years of operations, we look forward with great anticipation to the next fifty.

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