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Fishing in the Kuskokwim River has been so good that the Alaska Department of Fish and Game on Friday eliminated the controversial weekly subsistence closures for the rest of the summer.

"Elders, they say this is one of the good years," said Fritz Willie of Napakiak, a village on the Kuskokwim River a dozen miles west of Bethel. Families in his community have already put away most of the fish they'll need for the next year, he said, "So we're not complaining."

"Things are going really well," said area biologist Tracy Lingnau, who spends the early summer managing the Yukon fisheries in the village of Emmonak. "Fishermen are happy. They're seeing the benefits of a good run coming back."

In the past, good runs were expected, and families fished steadily until their subsistence needs were filled. Commercial fishing, while small-scale compared to other areas of the state, provided a rare infusion of cash into villages all along the river.

But for reasons that biologists still don't fully understand, Western Alaska salmon runs began to founder. By the late 1990s, catches had fallen off steeply.

On the Kuskokwim, the combined subsistence and commercial take of chum salmon, which often exceeded 500,000 fish in previous years, dropped as low as 80,000. King salmon harvests, almost all of which were for subsistence, fell by half.

The Yukon River king salmon return of 2000 proved to be the worst in recorded history, while the summer and fall chum runs fell to one third or less of their long-term averages. The loss of salmon forced families to buy food they normally caught and to give away, sell or kill sled dogs they couldn't afford to feed.

On both rivers, rebuilding plans were enacted in 2001 that restricted subsistence fishing. Village fishermen agreed to the plans, which called for a mix of open and closed periods every week to ensure enough fish would pass their nets to spawn, but chafed at the restrictions.

Subsistence fishermen found it particularly difficult to accept the closures when sport and commercial fisheries were allowed to proceed.

It's too early for the rebuilding plans to show results - king and chum salmon typically return to spawn every four to five years. But most of the runs have shown steady improvement since hitting bottom.

Biologists can't say why, said Fish and Game's Lingnau.

"For the most part, it has to do with ocean conditions" and how the salmon fare during their years on the high seas, he told the Anchorage Daily News.

Lifting the three-day subsistence fishing closure Friday heads off a potential regionwide act of civil disobedience.

Many Kuskokwim subsistence fishermen had planned to ignore Sunday's scheduled closure and keep fishing to protest the increase in fishing time in Area M, also known as False Pass, approved this spring by the Alaska Board of Fisheries. Now there's no closure to violate.