This year, Copper River reds are returning in their biggest numbers ever. Before June was over, the harvest had already surpassed the record of 1.5 million set in 1918. Fishermen attribute the strong recent runs partly to better state management, with migrating salmon now counted by sonar to ensure proper spawning numbers. The sonar is located upriver near Childs Glacier, at the end of the only road out of Cordova, where calving ice sometimes washes hundreds of passing salmon out of the river and onto the opposite shore. We told them calving glaciers are not an acceptable method and means of fishing,'' said commercial fish biologist Slim Morstad, whose authority to open and close commercial periods makes him the most important man in Cordova during summer months.
Fishermen say it can take a newcomer years to learn to read the flats.
Thea Thomas, who has fished the flats for a decade, remembers being lonely and disoriented her first year. She was 29 and didn't know how to follow the inside passages, how to cross the bars, how to set out a net in the surf. She came from a city, her father was a lawyer, and she said she didn't know how to use a screwdriver as a girl. The only fishermen who would talk to her on the radio were other bewildered rookies. The chance to work for herself and work outdoors were reasons she cited for giving up a career- track job as a state Fish and Game biologist.