Situk River

About

Situk River, Alaska — Yakutat Set Gillnet, Steelhead and King. The river drains 165 square miles of the Yakutat Forelands, flowing from Situk Lake east toward Situk Bay near the community of Yakutat, a town of roughly 540 people in the Yakutat City and Borough. Fed by cold, spring-influenced water, the Situk runs a mostly gentle Class I–II course rated for optimal flows between 200 and 1,500 CFS. USGS gauge 15129500 records an average of about 600 CFS, with a historical benchmark near 540 CFS — modest numbers that belie the river's outsized reputation among anglers.

That reputation begins with the Yakutat Tlingit, whose seasonal salmon camps lined the Situk for thousands of years. The drainage is their homeland, and their fishing rights and traditional uses continue to the present day. The name they gave the water — preserved through generations — anchors the river's identity as firmly as any modern designation.

The watershed's more recent history is one of timber and, eventually, protection. From the 1830s through the 1920s, the Situk River watershed was logged to support the regional timber industry of the mid-to-late 1800s and the railroad expansion of the 1860s through 1910s. Local sawmills, logging drives, and downstream lumber operations were the major operators. The exhaustion of old-growth stands around 1910, the start of state forestry conservation in 1915, and the establishment of state forests in the 1930s brought large-scale logging to an end. Early hydrological work followed a parallel arc, from USGS surveys of the 1870s onward through streamflow assessments and, later, Clean Water Act–era studies.

Protection arrived formally in 1980. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act expanded the Tongass National Forest to encompass 16.7 million acres, including the entire Situk River drainage. That designation has helped preserve the river's old-growth Sitka spruce corridor and shield its wild steelhead run from logging impacts. Today the river also carries an ADF&G Wild Steelhead Stream designation, formal recognition of the fishery that made it famous.

The modern Situk is a working river as much as a wild one. It supports the oldest and most lucrative commercial set gillnet fishery in the Yakutat area, averaging over $1.2 million in ex-vessel value annually across all salmon species combined. Anglers know it for two distinct runs: the late-winter steelhead holding from December through April, and a summer king salmon run that begins in late May and continues through July. Fall brings chum and coho, with silvers entering the system from August through October. Where the Situk joins the Ahrnklin River before reaching the bay, the Situk-Ahrnklin Estuary forms one of the most productive estuarine habitats in Southeast Alaska and the principal rearing area for the river's juvenile salmon. From the Situk Lake outlet down through the road-accessible Situk Bridge reach to the estuary, the river is served by operations like the Yakutat Lodge and the Situk River Fly Shop, which have hosted anglers here for decades in a setting reached mainly by air.