This past weekend, there was an interesting article in the Anchorage Daily News about this show and why filming was suddenly canceled. Turns-out that, while some of the "action" was real, the fundamental premise was not. These people weren't in the "bush" -- their 5-acre homestead was just a couple miles off the Richardson Highway, a few miles south of Copper Center, AK. Mind you, the Copper River Valley is about the size of Ohio and only has around 2500 residents -- but it's a long, long way from being "bush" Alaska. In fact, one of their neighbors got so annoyed at the filming helicopter regularly hovering over his property that he launched some aerial fireworks in its vicinity, just to indicate his displeasure. (Got fined $500 for it, though.)
Anyhow -- subsistence fishing allows for a lot of non-sporting harvest of salmon, especially reds (sockeye). They can taken with dipnets, throw nets, fish traps, fishwheels, etc. Regs vary by location, run strength, etc. -- but like someone said above, they're very liberal because, for most all of the people using these methods, the salmon, moose, caribou, etc. that they take from May-October is all the protein they're eating from November-April.
That said -- I've only been here seven years, but I've never heard of any subsistence or personal-use (another non-sportfishing category) fisherman trying to fill their larder by embracing the dumba$$ the way these yahoos did. Running around a creek grabbing fish as you can, burning-up more energy than the fish you catch will replace? Really -- how stupid does the Discovery Channel take its viewership to be?
(BTW - a "fish bonker" -- commercial or homemade -- is standard carry for about every fisherman I've seen up here. Bonk 'em, cut the gills, bleed 'em out, keep 'em cool and away from the real bears, then process them as quickly as practical. Good eatin'.)
Oh -- the cast apparently pulled-pitch with no notice because they claimed that they were threatened by unidentified locals and shots were fired in the night ...
