Sunday, January 22, 2017

Boat 149


The Alaska Department of Fish and Game requires Kenai River guides to display on the side of their boat a rather large green and yellow, watermelon shaped ADFG sticker, and a three digit number assigned to the guide. The purpose of the green and yellow sticker is to identify that the boat is being used for commercial activities. The three digit number is to make it easy to report a particular guide if illegal activities are being done (at least that's the best explanation I know of). My number is 149.

Licensing of guides on the Kenai River began in 1982. 207 guide boats were registered the first year. Since then, the numbers have been up and down with a peak of 396 guides registered in 2006 and 2007.  In 2016, the total was 267. Give or take a few percentage points, approximately 75% of the guides are Alaska residents, 25% are not. Other interesting statistics of the guide fleet include 29% of current guides have been registered for 15 or more years, while 17% of guides were new in 2016.

I'm not sure what the stats are for illegal guides on the Kenai River, I have my suspicions, so I'll save that topic for another day...



Beaver Creek Cabins & Guide Service

1 comment:

Dave Anderson said...

I always figure that those using a rogue guide are probably to cheap to pay a real one anyway!