10 Cast Net: Alaska Fish Counts

Tuesday 2 October 2012

Alaska Fish Counts

Good sport fishing isn’t hard to find in Alaska. In fact, in this land of 3,000 rivers, 3 million lakes and 6,640 miles of coastline, a sport fisher’s greatest challenge can be deciding where to get started. From an angler’s perspective, Alaska is enormous; fishing it all would require one to cast across a million square acres of streams, lakes and water-lapped shorelines every day for a full year. Think of it as the old anglers’ quandary – so much water, so many fish, so little time – but on a wilder, grander scale. Here to protect, maintain and improve these valuable sport fisheries is Alaska’s Division of Sport Fish. Established in the territorial days of 1951, the division’s creation coincided with the passage of the Dingell-Johnson Act, which dedicated federal money for states and territories to conduct recreational fisheries research. Today, the division oversees Alaska’s sport fisheries, as well as many personal use fisheries, a package worth more than $500 million annually.