Die-hard Anchorage fly fisherman not easily rebuffed by a tinge of cool weather earn a late-season reward on Friday.

Ship Creek from the Chugach Power Plant Dam upstream to Reeve Boulevard — which has been closed all season to protect spawning rainbow trout and salmon brood stock — reopens to trout anglers.

This isn’t the kind of opening that will attract crowds. But anyone who appreciates a day on a pretty river without a long drive out of town couldn’t do much better. And the small population of Ship Creek rainbows hasn’t seen an angler for months.

Sunday could be the last day the Begich, Boggs Visitor Center in Portage will be open for months.

Center director Lezlie Murray said Begich, Boggs will close 6 p.m. Sunday pending a decision by the U.S. Forest Service on whether to remain open weekends during winter.

Last year, the center was open Saturday and Sunday all winter, and the $4 fee charged adults from May 29-Sept. 26 was waived.

An industry group called SnowSports Industries America has just finished its report on the snow sports marketplace in the U.S. last winter. A few tidbits from the group’s 33rd annual update that may be of interest to Alaskans:

• Overall sales of $2.94 billion trailed only the winter of 2007-08, which saw $3 billion.

• Backcountry ski sales boomed 57 percent.

• Reverse camber snowboard sales were up 26 percent.

• Helmet sales increased 23 percent to 1.2 million units.

• A total of 877,000 pair of winter boots were sold.

When Glennallen angler Loren Bell was announced as winner of the Valdez Halibut Derby on Sunday night at the Valdez Civic Center, a smattering of boos from the 300 or so in attendance greeted him.

Fish envy for Bell's 277-pounder?

Hometown boosterism after Valdez' George Levasseur was disqualified after admitting he received help reeling in his 364-pound halibut, a violaton of derby rules?

Suspicions over who ratted out Levasseur, who described the help he got weeks earlier in an account published by the Daily News?

Mushing fans can get an Iditarod fix Saturday at the Alaska State Fair.

Reigning champion Lance Mackey, the only musher to win four Iditarods in a row, will be at the Iditarod booth for a 90-minute meet-and-greet with fans. Then he'll join several other mushers -- including his dad -- at the Borealis Plaza Tent, next to the Borealis Theater.

Lance will do the PR thing from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Iditarod booth, located on the Green Trail near the Borealis Plaza Tent.

With rain falling and moose hunters distracted, the banks of Mat-Su salmon streams should offer plenty of room this weekend.

“All the Parks Highway streams have a bunch of silvers,” Dave Rutz, Fish and Game area management biologist in Palmer told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. “Nobody is fishing now,” he said. “Everybody is going moose hunting.”

Productive waterways include the Little Susitna River and Willow, Little Willow, Sheep, Caswell, Goose, Montana and Sunshine creeks.

Worth a look are Jim Creek, south of Palmer, as well as Cottonwood, Fish and Wasilla creeks.

The pretty Anchor River near the tip of the Kenai Peninsula may be seeing its best silver salmon run in years. On Monday, a nice burst of 735 silvers past the fish-counting sonar 2 miles upstream from the mouth brought the season total to 3,795. That's the most on that date since at least 2006, when high water disrupted counting.

Last year at this time, some 1,100 fewer silvers had hit the river.

Time your fishing an hour or two before high tide, which brings fish into the river.

The Anchor Angler is a great spot for the lastest local information, 235-8351 or angler@xyz.net

Wonder what became of the daring duo aiming to become the first to cross the 56-mile Bering Straits on kiteboards?

Troy Henkels of Eagle River and Geza Sholtz of Switzerland are in Wales, awaiting winds strong enough to propel them to Russia. Since Friday, winds have been too flat for an attempt.

There, the team absorbed a taste of village life known to most Alaskans, but unfamiliar to some readers outside the state.

Now that's a big silver salmon.

Anchorage angler Harold Foley grabbed the lead in the Seward Silver Salmon Derby on Tuesday morning by landing an 18.89-pounder near Hive Island towards the mouth of Resurrection Bay.

Foley’s fish is Seward’s biggest derby silver since Renee James of Eagle River took the 2004 derby with a 19.79-pounder.

Wet and windy weather that had dogged the early days of the derby turned calm and dry by Tuesday afternoon.

Foley’s success moved Seward’s Chuck Wendt down to second place. Wendt, landed a 17.41-pound silver at Fox Island on Monday night.

The Kenai River and Les Anderson have regained their world-record status in the world according to Wikipedia.

The online dictionary had stripped Anderson of the world record -- one of the most revered records in Alaska -- and given the honor to a man named Andrew Gasson, who reportedly caught a 102-pound king this April at British Columbia's Skeena River.

A federal judge last week returned gray wolves to protection under the Endangered Species Act, effectively halting the possibility of wolf hunting seasons in Idaho and Montana this year.

U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy said in his ruling that de-listing portions of the Northern Rockies wolf population in Idaho and Montana while leaving those in Wyoming protected violated the Endangered Species Act, and that wolf populations cannot be managed based on political boundaries such as state lines.

Here's a handy back-to-school reminder for you kids -- don't use Wikipedia as a research tool.

According to the online "encyclopedia," the world record king salmon is no longer the 97-pound, 4-ounce chinook pulled from the Kenai River by Les Anderson in May 1985. That record was surpassed in April of this year by a fisherman named Andrew Glasson, who landed a 102.5-pounder while fishing British Columbia's Skeena River.

At least that's what Wikipedia says in an unsourced portion of its entry on "Chinook salmon."

With Shark Week in full swing on the Discovery Channel, it might be a good time to ask if Alaska will ever appear on the popular cable program.

Don’t hold your breath.

State fisheries biologist Scott Meyer of Homer reports that three sharks — the salmon shark, Pacific sleeper shark and spiny dogfish — are fairly common in Alaska, along with a rare great white sighting.

While the Russian River's red salmon run started slowly, the nearby Kasilof has accelerated a bit faster. In the nine days a sonar counter has operated at river mile 8, nearly 23,000 reds have been counted heading up the Kasilof. On the same date last year, about 1,300 fewer reds were past the sonar. But neither run compares with the massive returns in the early part of the decade. Between 2001 and 2005, an average of nearly 57,000 reds passed the Kasilof sonar by June 23.

Not all the king salmon news across Southcentral is cheery.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game on Thursday sliced anglers’ annual bag limit for Yentna River Drainage kings to one beginning Saturday. Among the waterways affected is the popular Talachulitna River as well as Lake Creek.
Kings caught before Saturday don’t count towards the limit.
For the last two years, Lake Creek has failed to miss its minimum escapement goal and last year was about 50 percent short.