Homer, Alaska - Sports - Hang onto your hat and look out for snagging hooks 09/17/08

Story last updated at 10:56 PM on Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Hang onto your hat and look out for snagging hooks

By McKibben Jackinsky
Staff writer

A steady stream of cars pulled into the parking lot and more fishermen lined the shore, as Shelley Twing of Anchor Point called out the time, her eyes glued to her cell phone's clock. The countdown couldn't have been more exciting for a rocket launch.

Better than a blast-off, it was the opening of snagging at the Nick Dudiak Fishing Lagoon at noon Friday.

Less than five minutes after the hooks flew into the water, Frank Mariman, 77, of Homer made the first catch.

Photo by McKibben Jackinsky

Homer fisherman Frank Mariman, 77, lands the first coho at the Nick Dudiak Fishing Lagoon within minutes after snagging began Friday. Mariman's fishing prowess has earned him the nicknamed "the professor" among his Fishing Hole buddies.

"That's why they call him 'the Professor,'" someone shouted, as Mariman reeled in a coho, or silver salmon, inescapably caught on a three-prong snagging hook.

By 12:10 p.m., Twing had landed a fish.

"This is something to brag about with the guys," Twing said of plans to tease the men in her family.

Nearby, Baily Medley, 10, and her family from Mountain Home, Idaho, tried their luck. Intent on casting into the telltale ripples of passing salmon, the family almost lost a cooler sailing away on the incoming tide.

Around the Fishing Hole, as the lagoon is commonly known, coolers, chairs, sacks of take-out food and nets marked fishermen's intent to stay put until they had their six-coho limit, casting and reeling in with the side-jerk motion intended to snag a fish.

Rinsing off his catch and putting it in a cooler, Jack Wheeler of Ninilchik said he heads to the hole every year the Alaska Department of Fish and Game opens it to snagging.

"I think we could use a few more hundred fish in here," Jim Rainwater of Homer laughed as he watched others around him land fish.

According to Nicky Szarzi, lower Cook Inlet area management biologist for the Alaska Sport Fish Division, deciding when to open the lagoon for snagging depends on whether or not fish are biting.

"If they're still biting, I don't open it until it's getting hard for people to hook a fish," Szarzi said.

How many were caught at the lagoon this season is still unknown, but Szarzi said judging from the number of fish she observed jumping at the lagoon, the harvest should prove a good one.

It should be good fishing in 2009, too, with the stock put in the lagoon earlier this year.

"The early run of kings is 210,000, then the early run of silvers is 120,000 and the late run of silvers is 100,000," Szarzi said.

Although local fund-raising efforts fell $1,800 short of the $25,000 goal to pay for the stock, Cook Inlet Aquaculture made up the difference.

Silvers spend one year in the ocean before returning, Szarzi said. King salmon can take between one to four years in saltwater before returning.

Snagging continues through the end of the year, with six the limit in the lagoon area.

"There won't be much in there for much longer, but we leave it open because it's easier," Szarzi said.

McKibben Jackinsky can be reached at mckibben.jackinsky@homernews.com.

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