Program aims to kill pike in Alaska PAY TO SLAY: Fish and Game gets money from fund that will supplement state's contribution.

The battle to rid Alexander Creek of salmon-munching northern pike may escalate into a war next summer.

More pike will be targeted by state biologists after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game was awarded $635,000 from the Alaska Sustainable Salmon Fund for a four-year program to kill pike.

That supplements $127,000 in state money devoted to the project.

Before pike gained a gill-hold in Alexander Creek, the waterway flowing into the Susitna River was one of the biggest king salmon producers on the west side of Cook Inlet. As recently as 1997, some 7,000 kings made their way up the creek.

Throughout Southcentral, pike have wiped out populations of rainbow trout and Arctic grayling in several lakes. But nowhere have they decimated a salmon run the way they have at Alexander Creek, where pike as large as 30 pounds patrol numerous side-channel sloughs

Three years ago, Dave Rutz of the Palmer Fish and Game office, estimated that 3-mile-long Alexander Lake, which feeds the creek, held 15,000 pike.

"It is pike heaven," Rutz said.

And king salmon hell.

Alexander's king salmon escapement goal, set by Fish and Game biologists, is 2,100 fish.

In 2009, just 275 escaped. Last year, it was down to 177.

"I flew it last summer," said area fisheries biologist Sam Ivey. "We're just not seeing a lot of main stem (salmon) spawners anymore."

Declining king salmon returns throughout much of the state further depressed any prospects of recovery.

The new money will go toward more extensive gillnetting.

"This will be a considerable effort to bring back a fishery that once was one of the largest over on the west side," Ivey said.

And while Ivey has no target number of pike he wants killed, he'd like to wipe out about 85 percent of the pike and bring that population into equilibrium with salmon.

"It's suppression, and it's been done in other places," he said. "When it's effective, it's usually done on an annual basis. Right now, we don't know what the long-term picture is -- or how often we'll need to go in there and do suppression work."

The pike invasion has virtually wiped out king salmon spawning in the main stem of Alexander Creek, Ivey said. Most of it takes place in Sucker Creek, a tributary.

"It completely changed the distribution where they spawned," Ivey said. "Hopefully, in the long run they'll return."

In the early 1990s, Alexander Creek was a bustling king salmon fishery with a handful of lodges operating along the riverbank. Because northern pike are not native to Southcentral Alaska, biologists believe the fish were planted there by anglers who enjoyed catching the voracious predator.

The slow-moving waters of Alexander Creek proved ideal.

"It's real convoluted as a river," Ivey said. "In spring or during the flood season, it'll oxbow and it becomes stagnant -- vegetated and muddy. Perfect pike habitat."

From Alexander Lake, pike moved steadily downstream, dominating the system and eating virtually anything they could find -- young salmon, Dolly Varden, bugs, stickleback, Pacific lamprey, whitefish, scuds, freshwater shrimp, mice, ducks.

The Alaska Sustainable Salmon Fund is made up of Alaska's allocation of funds from the federal Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund, which was established by Congress a decade ago to protect, restore, and conserve Pacific salmon and steelhead populations and their habitats.

"The investments made should be returned many fold in terms of economic and social benefits," said Charles Swanton, director of the sport fish division at Fish and Game.

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