FAIRBANKS - Silver salmon fishing doesn’t get much better than it is in Valdez right now.

“It’s awesome,” Dave Cobb with the Valdez Fisheries Development Association said. “There are big fish and lots of them.”

There are lots of fishermen pursuing them, too, but there seems to be plenty of fish to go around.

“There are probably 250 boats here and it has been that way for 10 days now,” Cobb said on Tuesday from the Solomon Gulch Hatchery in Valdez. “There are boats all the way from the head of the bay all the way back down to Potato Point and everybody seems to be catching fish.”

Shaun Lea at Fish Central, which books charters for anglers, described the coho fishing in Valdez as “fabulous” and said charters are having no problems catching their daily limits.

While only a few silvers have been reported caught at Allison Point, that should change any day now, Cobb said. Silvers have just started showing up at the hatchery, which is at Allison Point.

The silver run will peak in about a week and fishing should remain good “right up to Labor Day,” Cobb said.

That’s the final day of the Valdez Silver Salmon Derby, which began July 24 and runs through Sept. 5.

Despite the excellent silver fishing, there were no changes in the derby standings for the second straight week and it remains to be seen if anyone will catch a 20-pound coho.

Ten-year-old Kelvin Cann of Fallon, Nev. continues to lead the derby with a 19.10 pound silver he caught on Aug. 10. Cann will win $15,000 if his catch holds up.

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Regardless of whether anyone catches a 20-pound silver or not, the Valdez Silver Salmon Derby will have a bigger winner than the Seward Silver Salmon Derby, which ended Saturday.

Harold Foley of Anchorage won the Seward derby’s $10,000 first-place prize with an 18.89 pound silver.

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Most charter boats in Valdez have turned their attention to silver salmon, but there are still a few boats concentrating on halibut, evidenced by the 277.2 pound halibut caught by Loren Bell of Glennallen on Aug. 20 aboard No Excuses.

While the fish was still 86 pounds smaller than the record-setting 363.9-pound halibut George Levasseur caught on Aug. 6 to take the lead in the Valdez Halibut Derby, it did put Bell in second place in the derby, which would be worth $5,000 if it holds up through the end of the derby on Labor Day.

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If you didn’t pick up a Chatanika whitefish spearing permit, it’s too late.

It took the Department o Fish and Game in Fairbanks less than two days to issue 200 personal-use permits to spear whitefish in the Chatanika River this fall. The department began issuing the permits Monday morning and had issued all 200 permits by Tuesday afternoon.

The spear fishing season is Sept. 25 through Oct. 25. The permits allow fishermen to spear 10 whitefish.

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Dip net charters are no longer running at Chitina, but the redsalmon still are and there are even a few silvers beginning to show up. At least that was the report from Chitina last weekend and early this week.

Dip-netters were still having good success scooping fish out of the Copper River when Mark Hem shut his charter boat down for the season on Saturday.

“We don’t usually pull out because the fishing is bad; we pull out because there’s no business,” Hem said.

The Copper River has been dropping steadily and will continue to do so with cooler weather, he said.

“As the water starts dropping there will be a few spots better than others,” he said. “It’s going to get to the point where you’ll start hitting small runs again and the fish won’t be as consistent as earlier in the summer.”

Hem said dip-netters were just starting to pick up a few silvers when he shut down on Saturday.

“Before we closed, for two or three days we had seen one or two silvers a day,” he said.

The dip netting season is open through Sept. 30.

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It might be worth a trip to the Mat-Su Valley this weekend to chase some silver salmon before moose hunting starts next week in the Interior.

“All the Parks Highway streams have a bunch of silvers in them,” Dave Rutz, area management biologist with ADF&G in Palmer said.

Moose hunting season opened in the Valley last week and stream banks are practically empty, he said.

“Nobody is fishing now,” he said. “Everybody is going moose hunting.”

A list of Parks Highway streams that should be productive include the Little Susitna River and Willow, Little Willow, Sheep, Caswell, Goose, Montana and Sunshine creeks.

Anglers are still reporting good results at Jim Creek south of Palmer for silvers, too. The same is true in Cottonwood, Fish and Wasilla creeks.

“A lot of the fish are getting colored up but there are still a lot of bright, fresh ones,” Rutz said.

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Down on the Kenai Peninsula, silver salmon fishing is good in both the Kasilof and Kenai rivers and the number of anglers pursuing them has dropped off with the arrival of hunting season.

Water conditions have improved almost 100 percent during last week and silvers are widely distributed in each river, said Jason Pawluk, assistant area biologist for ADF&G in Soldotna. In the Kasilof, there are silvers all the way up to Tustemena Lake. In the Kenai, silvers are spread all the way up to Skilak Lake.

The first pulse of silvers will begin tapering off in about a week but a second pulse of silvers will begin hitting the river in mid-September, he said.

Now is the time hard-core rainbow trout and Dolly varden fishermen focus their efforts on the upper Kenai, Pawluk said. Red salmon are pairing up and the feeding frenzy will begin soon.

As of Aug. 24

Valdez Halibut Derby

Overall

1. George Levasseur, Valdez, 363.9 lbs., Aug. 6, Lisa Michelle

2. Loren Bell, Glennallen, 277.2 lbs.., Aug. 20, No Excuses

3. Mark Sams, Valdez, 254.0 lbs., July 16, No Excuses

Valdez

Silver Salmon Derby

1. Kelvin Cann, Fallon, Nev., 19.10 lbs., Aug. 10, Kittiwake

2. Chelsea Harrison, Valdez, 18.96 lbs., Aug. 2, Connie B. III

3. Betty Valdes, Eagle River, 18.84 lbs., Aug. 14, private boat

Seward

Silver Salmon Derby

1. Harold Foley, Anchorage, 18.89 lbs., Aug. 17, $10,000

2. Chuck Wendt, Seward, 17.41 lbs., Aug. 16, $5,000

3. Alexander Beitter, Anchorage, Aug. 21, $2,000

Homer Jackpot

Halibut Derby

1. Mark Hilts, Grand Rapids, Minn., 273.2 lbs., July 13, Magic Waters Charters

2. Dixie Lee Micke, Terra Bella, Calif., 265.8 lbs., July 28, private boat

3. Steve White, Kettle Falls, Wash., 257.4 lbs., Aug. 5, Alaska Coastal Marine

Contact outdoors editor Tim Mowry at 459-7587.