Roughly 75 miles via a 45-minute float plane ride from Anchorage will get you to Shell Lake. It’s a remote lake that lies at the base of Shell Hills. Shell Creek drains into the Skwentna River; all within the Susitna River watershed. You’ll find Shell Lake to be a peaceful location with a handful of year-round residents, but yet there is a strong and vibrant community feel. It’s also home to the Shell Lake Lodge which has been in business since 1978.
Shell Lake also happens to be the location of one of CIAA’s longest running pike suppression projects.
Northern pike and the impact on salmon
Similar to a lot of other lakes within the Susitna River watershed Shell Lake has a population of invasive northern pike and they have had quite an impact on the lake’s salmon population. In fact, Shell Lake was once one of the most productive systems in the Yentna River system—along with Chelatna, Hewitt and Judd lakes. In 2006, 69,800 sockeye salmon returned to Shell Lake to spawn but there was a drastic decline following that year. Less than 1,000 sockeye adults have returned annually since 2011.
Northern pike predation is the number one reason for the drastic decline in sockeye salmon, although there are other factors at play including underlying disease in the population along with seasonal migration barriers, such as beaver dams, throughout Shell Creek. Since 2012 crews have been working to harvest as many northern pike as possible from Shell Lake in hopes to aid in the rebound of the sockeye population. We also conducted a rehabilitation project at Shell Lake by conducting two egg takes with subsequent releases of the resulting smolt to try to preserve the genetic lineage of the stock.
Suppression efforts
We have removed 7,595 northern pike from Shell Lake from 2012 to the spring of 2025. This has been completed mostly with gillnets meant to remove as many pike as possible. In the last five years we haven’t caught more than 100 northern pike in a season, which is quite a feat. There are just less pike in Shell Lake, but why? One factor could be the water level.
In 2019, there was a 1.2 foot drop in the water level recorded making it the most significant drop that we recorded in the lake. We believe the water level drop did one of two things. It either dried out pike eggs. Or it made juvenile pike more vulnerable to predation by forcing them into deeper water away from the cover of vegetation therefore affecting pike survival and the overall pike population within the lake. That reduction in the pike in one year is still significant at Shell Lake and the population has yet to rebound, but we assume it will without consistent and costly suppression efforts.
Alternative suppression method
This year we received funding from the Alaska Sustainable Salmon Fund (AKSSF) to conduct a flow control feasibility assessment at Shell Lake. The idea being that by manipulating the lake level—or flow from Shell Lake—a spawning failure could be recreated in the pike population year after year, which would aid in the suppression effort.
You might be wondering if that’s even possible; so am I. We don’t have the answer yet but are working towards it. We contracted with HDR for the engineering work and plan to do a site visit in June and a public meeting for lake residents on July 3 at 3:00pm at the Shell Lake Lodge. A notification is set to be mailed to Shell Lake property owners soon. The meeting will be recorded for those that cannot make and will be posted on our website.
