Alaska Week Three - Fishing Follies

(Michael - Spending most of the summer in Alaska has been really fun! My favorite RV park we’ve stayed at has been the Diamond M Ranch. We ended up staying here for 3 weeks. I liked the basketball court and the wifi. John liked the ranch with the horses and other animals. We fished a lot in the town, Kenai, where Diamond M Ranch was. The first day we fished we didn’t really have the right equipment. The second day we went back with new fishing poles, hooks, and yarn and we caught 7 big sockeye salmon. The third day we caught 14 salmon. All the fish we caught were red (sockeye) salmon. It was cool. Fishing for the red salmon was hard at times, the fish were really strong! We couldn’t just reel them in completely, we had to use nets once we got them close to the bank. Then we had a huge stick for whacking their heads to kill them before we would bleed them out (remove their gills). Summer in Alaska has been fun and we still aren’t done, we still have about 2 weeks left in Alaska before we head back towards Colorado. )

(John - I have been having a great time in Alaska. I have been halibut fishing twice and salmon fishing three times. Me and my Dad went halibut fishing the first time by ourselves, we kept 2 fish each (the limit for halibut). It was so fun we decided to take the whole family next time. Because of the rough sea, we all got seasick except for Dad. I only threw up once and then I caught a lot of fish. I caught a 35 pound halibut and a 25 pound one too. Dad did most of the work when we were all seasick and he caught most of the fish. Then we tried salmon fishing from the bank of the Kenai River but only caught two fish on our first attempt. Dad hooked 8 of them but we didn’t have big enough hooks so we never landed them. The guy next to us let Michael and I reel in some of his fish. On the next day, we went to a different spot and caught 7 fish, we made a pool that fresh water flowed in and out of that we kept our fish in. On our next trip out, we fished at midnight and caught 12 fish. We caught one more as Dad was cleaning the fish because we could catch more the next official day. We were there until 1:00 am filleting the fish. I love the fishing and I am having a great time. The Department of Fish and Game even changed the limit to 6 per person yesterday since the salmon run is so big this year!)

We like Kenai so much we decided to stay another full week. John has been trying very hard to convince us all to just stay and live here. I would be up for that for a few years, but the idea is to get settled and stop moving around all the time. If we already owned a chunk of land and could have a set up like the RV campground/ranch it would be very hard not to stay. Of course, we are here during the best weather and activity time of the year, and we might think differently if we were here in January in the dark and cold. For now, there so many things to do, and we are in a really nice place with friendly staff and other campers, so we just felt like we should stay. We were waiting for the big salmon run and it started pretty much the first day of our third week in Alaska. The numbers are in and the fish count shows record numbers of red salmon in the rivers. They have counted over 700,000 fish running up the river. There are so many fish, they just doubled the daily catch limit for sport fishing from three to six per person. The canneries are so full, some of them have stopped taking new deliveries from the commercial fishermen because they are over processing capacity, out of ice, and out of storage.

Our first day fishing was a learning day at Swiftwater Park with some light gear and a couple new lures a guy recommended at the sporting goods store. I guess it was what he needed to sell, but it wasn't what we needed. We were obviously the newbies in the crowded section of the river where we were. It is known as combat fishing here this time of year because everyone is fighting for space on the bank and the tone can get ugly. Many people have spent a lot of money getting here for their dream fishing trip and they don't want any problems, crossed lines, etc.. It is dangerous because the current is very fast and it gets powerful if you step out a little too far, and because the lines and hooks being slung everywhere can easily catch people in addition to the salmon. When the lines get stuck on the bottom and are yanked loose, or a line gets spit out from a fish that gets away, it slingshots back towards the shore and can take out an eye. We saw a medical center with a sign advertising hook removal. One local told us the hospital has a dummy they put a pin in each time they have a hook they have to remove. At the end of the season, the dummy is a pin cushion. We also talked to several people that fell in the water and had stories of just barely making it - only after being grabbed by someone else to help them out. One guy who was drying out his clothes from his narrow escape told Shelli he was being dragged down river by his waders filled with water and he couldn't turn over to be able to use his arms. He said he was helpless and wouldn't have made it if someone had not grabbed him. Another guy in our RV park, John from Liverpool, England, said he would have been gone if his wife hadn't grabbed him. When I mentioned to our John, Liverpool is where the Beatles were from, this John said he was their same age and knew them when he was growing up. He said Paul and John both dated his younger sister. I guess she could have taken Yoko's place if things had gone differently.

We were able to find space and not tangle up everyone's lines, but we weren't landing any fish. A friendly guy beside us landed fish after fish. His son had just joined the Marine Corps and he had a USMC lanyard around his neck, so we had an easy conversation starter. He had caught his limit of three fish per day at the time, so he helped by giving us some pointers and letting Michael and John use his rod and reel. We left with two nice red salmon on our stringer and took them to the cleaning station at the park.

John with the first salmon we caught. Thanks to Jim in the background, we got to use some gear that was suitable.

This was the first salmon I caught thanks to Mr. Jim's gear. (John)

This is the fish that Mr. Jim let me reel in. (Michael)

WHOAH!!! A fish!

Dinner was fresh sockeye salmon on the the grill - a little plain, but good. The next day we cooked salmon for dinner again but spiced it up by brining the fish in salt and sugar water for hours, then pan frying it with garlic, onion, smoked paprika, olive oil and butter. It was served on bowl of big penne pasta with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. For dinner the next night we made salmon burgers by finely chopping the fish (John broke in our new ulu knife chopping it), adding eggs, panko, garlic, liquid smoke, smoked paprika, onion powder, and lime powder. The burgers had a very nice flavor and the texture was very good.  For another meal, we put panko bread crumbs on a halibut fillet and pan fried it in butter and olive oil, then topped it with toasted almonds and a coconut lime sauce. We have several ideas for each fish to try next time, and we will have a lot of fish to try it out on.

We have learned we can eat better in an RV than we did sometimes at a house when we were always busy with routine stuff.  We go out to eat less often, we make what we want with what we have and work on our creativity, and it can be very good. Of course we have our fair share of snack cakes, chips, cookies, candy, hot chocolate, roasted marshmallows, and ice cream.

The following morning, I went back to the beach at low tide to look for the deeper black sand deposits that might contain gold. I found some that were more promising than my previous attempt, so I filled two 5 gallon buckets and a couple of gallon zip lock bags. Then I walked down the beach and saw an even better deposit. With only one gallon bag left, I had to just put the sand right into my backpack. When I put the wet backpack on, I heard the seams of my backpack rip a little, and I had to walk bent over to keep the weight low. It was very heavy and the buckets were not light. I had to make four trips back down the beach, up the hill and to the car. So far, all the gold I have found is....... tiny, and not much of it. At least I'm getting exercise.

We bought some better fishing gear and prepared for what we now knew was a winning technique for catching red salmon. The line is set up with a weight and bare hook with a piece of yarn tied just above it. It is flipped, not cast, just a couple of yards out out into the water upstream and followed with the tip of the rod as it goes downstream. When we feel a good bump, we do a quick retrieval because the fish swim with their mouths constantly open, and a bump probably means the line is in their mouth. We hope to set the hook in the corner of their mouth because a snag outside the mouth is supposed to be thrown back.

That same night we went back to Swiftwater Park and gave it another shot. This time we each landed big red salmon. Whenever one of us would get a fish on, whomever wasn't fishing grabbed the net (we had to buy a bigger net too, by the way) and scooped it up. When they are are hooked, they put on a great show. Many times they will jump out of the water just feet from you and start pulling line out as they run into the current. A lot of the time there are multiple fish on for people within just a few feet of each other and the water is churning with splashing fish and people grabbing nets. It's pretty exciting. The fish flop around a lot when they are in the net and on the bank. We got splattered with mud each time getting the hook out, and, as is the technique, smacking the fish in the head with a rock or stick before putting it on the stringer. If you can't find your stringer, it helps to have two inventive boys that can make a fish pen out of rocks. With a catch of seven, and it getting way past dinner time, we called it a night. If you plan ahead and have bags to carry the fish in, you have no problem getting them up the hill to the car. If you didn't, you can try to use the flimsy bag your new hip waders came in, but it doesn't work well. Our fish were bigger than the bag, but we managed to get them up the hill.  When we got back to the car we found the stringer and a garbage bag. When Michael held out the bag, John dropped the first fish in head first and it went straight through the bag and onto the ground. Salmon have a kind of pointy nose, and I guess about a seven or eight pound fish rocket with a pointy nose was just too much for the bag we had. We wrapped the fish in what was left of the bag and stopped just before closing time at the processing house to have the fish packed and frozen. On the way in, a couple of the fish slid out of the bag and onto the ground in the parking lot, generating some laughs from all of us and a guy in a truck that was pulling in. When it was time for the guy inside to load our fish into the bucket on the scale, he picked up the bag, without supporting the bottom, and it ripped the rest of the way spilling the fish on the floor. We will have tenderized salmon.

Michael landing a big fish while John and I both have nets ready to grab it.

John helping Michael get the fish over to the stringer.

John helping a nearby fisherman land his catch. He, Shelli, and Michael were a big help to others.

The first fish I caught of the day. (Michael)

John netting one of my catches. You can see the splashing all around him. The fish are really strong and keep flapping and flopping all the way to the end. You can see how far out most people go into the water. Just another step or two out here and the current can take you down in a heartbeat.

It takes a lot of teamwork to get the salmon all the way on the bank without losing it. (John)

Shelli catching a sockeye. In between Shelli and me you can see a fish being landed by the person on Shelli's left. John is on the right about to net Shelli's fish.

It took all three of us to 'land' the salmon. This was definitely a fun and entertaining way to fish! (Shelli)

Here, I am bleeding the fish so the blood doesn't get in the meat after the fish is dead.  (John)

This is the fish I caught and you can see the fish pool Michael and I made. (John)

This is the new gear we bought in action, it worked so much better! (John)

We forgot to take a picture at the river. This is outside the fish house, these fish are heavier than they look. (John)

We decided to all go on a halibut fishing charter because John and I had such a good time when we went, and we all really like halibut. We went on a small boat out of the town of Ninilchik, with only 6 passengers. It was about 45 miles to the charter office so we had to plan plenty of time to get there on time. We had a show time of 3:45 am and that meant a wake time of about 2:15. None of us had gone to sleep before 11:00 pm, and I didn't even get in bed until about 1:00 am - and never fell asleep. After a little sleep deprivation, we made it to the boat and were launched into the bay by a big John Deer tractor. The tractor pushes the boat into the water and when it floats off the trailer, the tractor pulls the trailer away until it's time to catch the boat on the return leg. There were at least a dozen other boats being launched the same way, and we all went out into what turned out to be very rough water. There were big swells left over from a storm the previous night. The boat kept slamming down hard and jarring our teeth and spines as we pushed on out for 45 minutes that felt like three hours. When it was time to bait the first hook, it had started to calm, but it was too late. John and I felt bad, Shelli felt worse, and Michael felt horrible. John and I powered on while Shelli and Michael took a breather.  John landed the second fish of the boat and it was a really big one that took a lot of hard work to get in. With 4 pounds of weight on the line, and about 175 feet of line to reel in - before you add the weight of a fat, flat fish fighting, it is a heck of a workout. Shelli chummed the water over and over while Michael slept to try to get over the seasickness. John felt bad enough to stop fishing, so it was just me reeling, and reeling, and reeling. I caught fish after fish, alternated arms for cranking, and used the rod holders a lot. Within a minute of having the line out, I was reeling a fish in. I alternated between John's rod and mine, and sometimes had to choose which one felt heavier to decide which one to reel in first. Shelli reeled in a fish and John chummed the water before he got back in the fight. Then Shelli was back to chumming the water. John caught the last fish and we called it a day as Michael was waking up. My legs were shaking and my arms were shot. Some of it was fatigue from the previous day, night, and the fishing, and some of it was just seasickness blahs. The ride back in was not as bad, and since we got started so stinkin' early, we were back on land before 9:30 am. After taking our fillets to be packed and frozen, we learned we had 72 pounds of cleaned fish!

I never even touched a fishing pole, I was just too sick. (Michael)

It calmed down a lot once we started fishing and it was a clear view to the mountains on the other side of the Cook Inlet. It's hard to see, but there is a puffin in the water on the right.
Or....could it be Russia? I have heard that you can see it from here. (Shelli)

John, Shelli, and Michael zonked out on the return.

John measuring up his biggest fish. It turned out to be the biggest catch of the day on our boat!

This is the 35 pound fish I caught but Dad helped a "little." (John)

The catch of the day!

Now with a total of 92 pounds of halibut being frozen for us between the two halibut trips at one processing place and 34 pounds of salmon being frozen at another, we were looking at about $400 to ship it back, and we don't even have a house to ship it to. We had to get a storage solution. We looked for a 3 cubic foot freezer that would it underneath out RV, but couldn't find one, so we bought a 5.3 cubic foot freezer for $160 to hold all the fish, and put in the middle of the RV. We aren't sure if we will carry it out to the car when we drive, or if we will just move it in to the walkway when we bring the slide-out in. It will fit, but the walkway will be pretty much completely blocked. There are some cons of having the big freezer in the way, but it allows us to carry the fish and maybe extra ice cream, so it's clearly worth it.

After our no sleep, big wave, chum bucket halibut hauling trip, we took the rest of the day off from fishing. The next day we slept in, and and hung out around the campground, doing some cleaning. There is a lot of cleaning to do when each trip ends up with wet, muddy, smelly fish clothes, or pounds of sand and dust that makes it's way into the RV. Even with normal conditions, all the dirt that makes it into a house makes it into an RV, but there is a lot less space for it to be spread around. Add the fur of a golden retriever and the dust from a gravel parking area with a lot of other RV's driving by, and there is a lot of accumulation of dust bunnies and dirt gorillas. 

That night we went for a late night of fishing to hit the 9:00 pm high tide run. We had big ones that got away after running down the river in the current and snapping lines and leaders, but we had our share of big fish too. We all caught fish again and ended up catching our limit of three fish each, plus one smaller salmon we threw back. We remembered the stringer this time, but it wasn't long enough. Our fish wouldn't fit. Besides the  big salmon, Michael even caught a tiny fish, which had to be the smallest one ever caught on a hook in the river. Not long after, John pulled a tiny one in too. I don't know the odds of that, but it has to be extremely low.

We all helped people nearby land their fish by using our new net whenever they had a fish on. Michael and John really stepped it up and were fishing and helping like adults even though they were the youngest people I saw on the river. At 11:45 pm or so, I was at the table in the river filleting our 12 fish. It took me a while, but at least I had bags this time. Just after midnight, Michael saw a salmon swim by close to the edge and pointed it out. John grabbed it and we had our first fish of the next day. Our limit had reset so we were able to go home with 41 pounds of fillets. On the way home as it was actually getting decently dark, dark enough to need headlights, we saw a big moose on the side of the road. We were all on the lookout for more, but they blend in very well at the just past dusk lighting level. Just a few miles from our RV, I had to suddenly put on the brakes for a VERY big moose that just walked right out in front of us. She must have been close to seven feet tall and we all looked up at her as she lumbered across the road.

The first fish I caught of the night, you can see John fishing in the background. (Michael)

I caught a little fish on my hook, I made a world record! (Michael)

A close up of the fish. See the red hook? Above the hook is just an inch or two of colored yarn we tied to the line.

The flash makes it look a lot darker than it was. I was cleaning fish with no need for light other than the ambient light that was available. The camera had red eye reduction on and fired a bunch of pre-flashes plus the flash. It didn't go over well with the other people fishing that couldn't see anymore. I was flash blind for a little while. You can see the mud splatters on John and Michael.

The next day we needed another long sleep-in morning to recover and we took it easy around the campground for a while. We went with the campground group on a fishery tour in the afternoon. It was a family operation with boats and nets in the bay. They explained how they launch their boats with cables and trucks because the tide changes and crasher waves make it dangerous, how the six week season can be a money loosing period for them if the fish run is low, or the trouble they can have when the run is very large and canneries can't handle their catch. The tour explained why the prices of wild sockeye is what it is in the lower 48 states, which was interesting, but it wasn't exactly exciting stuff for 10 and 11 year olds. We left early and took Michael and John to see the movie Cars 2 as a reward for their can-do attitude and performance on the river so late at night.

We rounded out the week with a bunch of time around the campground with Michael and John playing with all the kids in the park while I sorted through my black sands and Shelli picked up our halibut fillets. Guess what, the 5 cubic foot freezer may not be big enough. The 92 pounds of halibut pretty much half way filled it up and we have over 65 pounds of salmon at the fish house. We aren't even through fishing, so this could get interesting. We could have some help eating it if needed because Maui has had some salmon now and he REALLY likes it. His dog food is salmon and rice, but the real thing must be better somehow. We are parked near the smoker that is being run pretty much constantly and Maui has been standing outside eyeing the trays of salmon waiting to go in. We could have an incident in the campground if we don't watch it. I don't know what the people would do if he ran over and ate a bunch of their fish, but I know they have fillet knives, and it could get ugly.

Maui staring down the salmon on the rack in the top left of the picture.

In spite of the big salmon run and new higher limit of fish we could keep, we have already done a lot of fishing and we decided to take a break. There are a lot more people here on the weekends, including Friday, and it is packed on the roads, beaches, and rivers. I went to the beach Saturday and there were at least five times more people dip netting than I had seen before. They were staggered from the water's edge out to chest high. There were fish spines and heads all over the place, and the sand was churned up from the trucks and ATVs that had been going back and forth. Surprisingly, it didn't stink as bad as you might expect. I guess the cooler temperatures keep things in check.

We just took it easy the last couple of days of the week just hanging out at the campground. There are lots of trails and plenty of room for bike riding. There is a basketball court and plenty of kids here to play with. Michael and John were having enough fun without going anywhere. We went to our second Saturday night social and had salmon, rhubarb crisp, and salad, among other things. The salmon is fresh, the salad and rhubarb was picked today from the farm on the ranch. They were celebrating owner family's grandpa's birthday tonight and they had guitar and fiddle players playing bluegrass, Celtic, and civil war era songs while grandpa and his granddaughter danced. The family that runs this place is doing it right. If I had a setup like they do, I would stay here for sure.

The basketball court. Michael and John are on the left. You can see the double decker bus and the spiral staircase to the viewing area where they have the Saturday night potluck socials.

We will be here until Thursday of next week when we drive up through Anchorage on the way to Denali.