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KENAI -- Fishing guides on the Kenai River are leading an effort to bring professional standards to the state's most popular sport fishery.

The program that guides hope to establish would eventually lead to strict certification standards for river professionals. It was unveiled last week before the Kenai River Special Management Advisory Board.

The program is called the Kenai River Guide Academy and is the result of years of planning from Kenai guides, the management board and faculty members at Kenai Peninsula College.

College director Gary Turner said he got onboard after guides came to the college asking if there was some way to make a standards-based certification program a reality. Since the college already participates in similar programs in other industries, the idea seemed like a natural fit, Turner said.

"The college in our role works with industry all the time," he said.

Turner said that Joe Connors, who heads up the advisory board's commercial operators committee, came to him with a plan. After several months of work, a committee made up of college faculty and Kenai guides was able to design a curriculum to put the new standards in place.

Suzanne Fisler, director of the Kenai River Center, said the plan is to have the academy ready to begin certifying guides as early as next spring, with the academy eventually becoming a prerequisite for anyone hoping to receive a permit to guide on the river.

Turner said during the first year of the program, all guides new to the Kenai would have to attend the academy's 40-hour program and pass both its written and oral examinations before receiving a guide license.

In 2006, guides with less than five years on the river would have to pass the course. The following year, guides with less than 10 years experience would be required to pass the course in order to get a license. And the following year, all guides regardless of experience would have to be certified.

In addition, Turner said, any guide cited and convicted for any river violation would be required to retake the course before his or her permit could be renewed.

Turner said the idea behind having guides retake the course is not to force guides off the river but to ensure things are done in a professional manner at all times.

"It's not to take guides away from their livelihood," he said.