The statistics below give a breakdown of how each group of anglers did for the early Kenai River king run. If you would like to review the historical statistics for all data going back to 1981, you can visit the Kenai River King Salmon Angler Success page where information on both early and late runs is available. The year 2000 for the late Kenai River king salmon run was nearly a carbon copy of the statistics for the 1999 year. Total number of angler days was identical to the year before also. The run size ended up being about 2,000 fish above the 13 year average of 43,600, and the catch rate and harvest numbers were again just a typical year with no real highlights.
Most effort is always in the lower section of the river.
The nonguided, nonmotorized Monday fishing effort in July was again lacking in participating numbers but those anglers who had drift boats that could fish on Monday in July had incredible hookup rates each of those days with some boats landing and releasing over a dozen fish in a half day of fishing. The statistics below give a breakdown of how each group of anglers did for the late Kenai River king run. If you would like to review the historical statistics for all data going back to 1981, you can visit the Kenai River King Salmon Angler Success page where information on both early and late runs is available. Overall only 610,000 reds were counted in the river and the actually spawning numbers after the angler harvest and dipnet catch was removed made this one of the weaker runs in the past ten years, and will, due to spawning numbers being low will end up having additional impacts on the future years which these parents were to produce. Hopefully the few years in a row showing better returning numbers might be an indication of a recovering coho run for the Kenai.