fishery management report no. 12–46 - Alaska Department of Fish ...

NORTHERN PIKE
Minto Flats
Background and historic perspective
The Minto Flats wetlands complex is located about 35 miles west of Fairbanks between the
communities of Nenana and Minto (Figure 3). It is an approximately 500,000-acre area of marsh
and lakes, interconnected by numerous sloughs and rivers. Most of the area is included in the
Minto Flats State Game Refuge, which was established by the Alaska Legislature in 1988 to
ensure protection and enhancement of habitat, conservation of fish and wildlife, and to guarantee
continuation of public uses within the area. The Chatanika, Tolovana, and Tatalina rivers, and
Washington, Goldstream, and numerous smaller creeks, flow into Minto Flats. These flowing
waters come together as tributaries to the Tolovana River, itself a tributary to the Tanana River at
its mouth at the southwestern end of the Flats. The waterways of the Flats are slow and
meandering.
The Minto Lakes, a group of large interconnected, generally shallow and heavily vegetated lakes
in the eastern Flats, are a popular northern pike fishing and waterfowl hunting area. In addition
to those who use boats, there are both guiding services and private pilots that travel to the lakes
in floatplanes. Guides and private individuals have cabins on some of the sparse areas of higher
ground not regularly flooded. Minto Lakes are thought to support the majority of the northern
pike sport fishery within the Tolovana River drainage, although the SWHS does not separate the
lakes’ harvest and catch data from the rest of Minto Flats.
Minto Lakes are a major northern pike spawning and summer feeding area. In winter, much of
the flowing and standing water within the Flats becomes anoxic, forcing fish to move to waters
of the Chatanika and Tolovana rivers or up tributary rivers to oxygenated areas. Winterkill is
common and can be a confounding factor in attempts to predict fish population dynamics and
assess angler impact. Northern pike are typically the only fish targeted by sport anglers in the
Minto Flats area. These large piscivores are located throughout the Flats and can be readily
taken on many types of lures.
The northern pike fishery of the Lower Chatanika River is included in this section because
northern pike move between Minto Lakes and Chatanika River, and the lower 35 miles of the
Chatanika River is within Minto Flats. Similarly, because effort, catch, and harvest estimates for
the Tolovana River appear occasionally in the SWHS data, and because Minto Flats and all of its
waters are within the Tolovana River drainage, general references in this section to the Minto
Flats complex and/or Tolovana River drainage should be considered a summation of
effort/harvest or catch of northern pike in the Tolovana River, Minto Flats, and the Lower
Chatanika River drainage.
The Tolovana River drainage/Minto Flats complex northern pike population has supported a
major proportion of the TRMA northern pike sport fishery for many years (Table 7). It was
primarily a summer fishery until the mid-1980s, when an intensive sport fishery developed on
concentrations of northern pike overwintering in the Chatanika River just upstream from the
mouth of Goldstream Creek. A subsistence fishery for northern pike (and whitefish) occurs near
the village of Minto and at historically used sites in the eastern portions of Minto Flats (Andrews
1988). Gillnets are used throughout the open-water period and northern pike are taken through
the ice with hook-and-line.
19