The personal-use dipnet fisheries at the mouths of the Kenai and Kasilof rivers are intended to put red salmon on Alaskans' tables only. But that's not always the case.
Sometime people catch much more than the limit and sell the surplus, and sometime they are not Alaskans at all.
State Fish and Wildlife Protection Maj. Jim Cockrell was involved in a number of different busts in 1996 regarding illegal sales of personal-use-caught fish, involving four couples from Outside.
"One couple from California dipnetted both the Kenai and Kasilof rivers, mostly for reds and silvers," Cockrell said.
Others sport-caught salmon and halibut and processed it for resale.
When the busts came down, officers seized 200 cases of canned salmon and four freezers of salmon, but missed several shipments already mailed to the Lower 48. He said the couples were not connected to each other.
"All of them were eventually convicted and paid substantial fines, and some lost fishing privileges in the state for several years and forfeited the fish and freezers, canning stuff, cookers," he said. "We ended up with quite a bit of stuff out of it."
He said some of the people were using the U.S. mail to send the fish to Oregon, California, Arizona, Louisiana and Florida.
Others, he said, including some today that he's heard of, pack up their motor homes and travel from campground to campground in the Lower 48, selling the salmon to pay for their vacations.
The '96 busts came from investigations the winter before, where undercover officers cruised Lower 48 campgrounds, looking to buy illegally sold salmon from the Kenai Peninsula. Even today, when troopers go out of state on prisoner transfers, or occasionally vacations, they are asked to swing by campgrounds.
The legal bag limit for a single person is 25 reds a summer and one incidental king salmon bycatch. Fishers get 10 more reds per member of the household. For instance, the head of a four-member house is allocated 25 fish and 10 more for each other member, for a total of 55. And despite the well-publicized 1996 busts, people continue to take advantage of the fisheries today.
"There's definitely abuses of the system. Not just dipnet, but sport fishing," Cockrell said. "But it's time-consuming to investigate."
And he said it's not the kind of violation that can easily be spotted by occasionally dropping by the dipnet beaches in Kenai and Kasilof.
Everyone seems to have a story of scofflaws overloading on the red salmon.
"I have personally witnessed, in the Yuma, Arizona, Saturday flea market, cans of Kenai River red salmon sold with little black and white labels they ran off on their computer," Kenai Mayor John Williams said. "Now, whether they are legal and have a license to do so, I don't know. But I have personally witnessed it and talked to them.
"They say, 'We catch them on the Kenai River and bring them down here to sell.'"
Williams said in past years he's also heard of big trailers towed by motor homes that have freezers in them to hold the fish.
"They just stuff it full and head on down the highway."
He also suggested some unscrupulous restaurateurs in Anchorage catch fish in the fishery and then put them on the menu.
"I would dare say that if a genetic match were made, a lot of salmon you find in Anchorage came out of the dipnet fishery," he said. "You'll often see people down here who you know are running a business in Anchorage."
"If you walk down there you pretty much see some folks getting more than their limit," said Rep. Ken Lancaster, R-Soldotna. "And some of them may or may not be Alaskans. But unless you have the authority to walk up and ask to see their driver's license, it's just an assumption."
Another violation, reported in the Clarion in July 1996, had three drift dipnetters who were so bold as to pull up to the Dragnet Fisheries dock in Kenai and try to sell their dipnet catch to them. The plant's operator ran them off as they were unloading their catch.
The main problem with the fishery is that there is essentially no one who walks up to people and asks for their IDs or checks their bags. Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials may cruise through once in a while, but they have no money to be there full time, and neither does state Fish and Wildlife Protection or the Kenai Police Department.
"We get a lot of reports that people are there day in and day out hauling a lot of fish in and continuing to fish," said Jeff Fox, commercial fisheries management biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. "We get involved if something bad goes on and we're right there, but we don't spend a lot of time there."
The Kenai Police Department patrols the beaches, but mostly just to keep the peace. Officers do not actively look to enforce the fishing regulations, said Lt. Jeff Kohler, though they will investigate if they receive a complaint, and occasionally hold a suspect until protection officers arrive.
"We do deal with a fair amount of complaints that we try to document and pass on to Fish and Wildlife Protection," he said.
Protection officers stationed on the peninsula can't police the dipnet fishery very closely because they're busy policing the commercial and sport fisheries that occur at the same time. Protection didn't get any more money for the dipnet fishery than the city of Kenai did after it was created.
"We need some sort of enforcement or policing down there to make sure it's done right," said Lancaster, who has tried to raise enforcement money for the fishery through legislation instituting a $10 user fee on top of the $15 sportfishing license required.
"If we had more presence there, it would keep it more honest," he said. "As you know, presence promotes honesty. When a cop drives by, everybody hits their brakes."
