Fishin mini-marathon

It has taken me longer to write this than I wanted but summer is in full swing and it is again full schedules for everyone. Here is our recent fishing trip summary.

Thoughts from the trail, almost forgotten due to the many hours of fishing last week before my brother in law flew out to Shemya (The Rock) for a 90 work rotation.

The weather this summer in Alaska has been almost perfect . . . not like the cold gray wet summer last year. No clouds . . . an unbelievable blue sky . . . and full daylight the full 24 hours each day. The twilight of the night sky gives some contrast to brightly lit days with sharp details in the shadows cast from objects all around.

Fishing has been great this year as the weather last summer made it almost impossible to get a line in the water. It either rained all the time or the wind was blowing so hard it was impossible and unsafe to get a boat away from shore. It is great having things return to normal times and temperatures.

I started my fishing ‘spree’ on Friday the 22^nd fishing overnight at the Eklutna Trailhead. There were five of us on the short drive from home to this easy access ‘fishin hole’ about 30 minutes away from my home. We were fishing for King Salmon in a manmade ‘extension’ of the Knik River. There were about a hundred people who spent the night and the chill in the air from the river kept everyone in a festive mood. It was subdued but as the fish were caught and landed cheers could be heard from those still waiting to catch their fish.

We slept for about an hour in the back of our rigs wanting to have a line in the water as much as possible. I caught my king just after 11am and we headed for home around 7pm after almost 24 hours at Eklutna.

Some of us returned Sunday afternoon for a couple of hours just before an afternoon rain shower moved though the area. We left to head home to prepare for the start of a mini-marathon trip the following afternoon. One of my brother in law’s co-workers was flying in from Utah mid afternoon for a 72 hour ‘blitz-fishing’ marathon. Demitry landed around 4:30pm and after I was off work we were heading back to Eklutna for a short time before driving to Seward the next morning for our halibut charter.

There was time spent loading the rig with all of our fishing and camping supplies . . . there was a bit of time ‘learning’ the proper way to do shots of vodka. Demitry was born in St. Petersburg Russia and wanted to show us how most people improperly partake of his favorite drink. I will have to say, we have been doing it all wrong for a long time . . . there were all kinds of items we have been missing . . . rye bread, green leafy things from the yard, the color and smell of tomato. It was different and entertaining to watch this ritual and did change the flavor of the vodka. I am not a drinker of vodka since high school since I had an unpleasant experience with it in one of the infrequent ice storm during a winter my senior year. After that long, cold walk home I never drank vodka again.

I slept for an hour before I had to drive down to Seward to catch our halibut charter at 6am, but Demitry and my son continued to do several more shooters. Needless to say Demitry wasn’t feeling so good as we made our way on out to the fishing area over two and a half hours out of port. The 2-4 foot seas gave the boat a bobbing motion which left Demitry down for some ‘chumming the water’ and sleeping things off a bit before he started fishing. Things started slowly but by the end of the day everyone had their two fish each limit. No garage door size halibut but nice ones which gave us about 50 pounds of filets once we had them processed.

We returned to Seward around 7pm and left for Soldotna around 8pm for the hour and a half drive through the mountains. Unfortunately there was a traffic accident on the way where a motorhome left the roadway and went down the embankment hitting trees. Two people from Hawaii were killed and another was Life Flight back to Anchorage’s hospital. The troopers were just re-opening the road when we drove past. We stopped by Hamilton’s Place in Cooper Landing for a hamburger since we had not eaten on the boat before heading to my friend’s house in Soldotna.

We planned to just put our fish in their freezer while we were fishing but when we arrived around 11pm they insisted we stay with them and changed our fishing plans to go with Keith king fishing the next morning. We had planned to dip net the Kasilof River before heading back north to fish for red salmon on the Russian River.

We built a fire in the campfire pit and sat around talking when a big moose walked down their driveway and around the side of the house to see what was going on. He watched us for a couple of minutes and after I told everyone to turn around and look, Demitry jumped up to take a picture which spooked the moose which ran away. He headed off in one direction when we noticed in the river another large moose was swimming across the fast moving current to the far side. We watched him swim his way about 1000 feet downriver before reaching the other side. He slowly climbed the bank and rested while eating the tree leaves. It was an incredible sight.

After a couple of hours around the fire we headed in to sleep for a couple of hours before hitting the river. Being on the river again was great. There were plenty of boats on the water but being a weekday not as crowded as the weekends. We spent several hours out before heading back so we could make our way to the Kasilof as originally planned.

I had trouble finding the road leading to the mouth of the river as my map (the fish & game one online) was not marked well. There were only a handful of people in the water and we talked with several about how it was going and decided to head to the Russian so everyone could fish.

We loaded up our fish from the freezer and had three coolers full and said our goodbyes to Keith and Susan. The drive to our next fishing found Mike and Demitry sleeping on the way as I fought to stay awake. We quickly grabbed another hamburger at Hamilton’s Place before going into the campground to the day use section to fish. We normally use the Grayling parking area but it was full as well as the king parking area. We had to use the pink salmon parking lot which is about a half mile farther to walk to the mouth of the Kenai River.

We were given the bear warnings and grabbed our gear and headed down the steps to the riverbank and the walkway along the river. It is beautiful as these massive ferns and wildflowers are everywhere. You can see the flattened areas where the bears have bedded down on the ferns so you keep an eye out for one to pop up about the growth. Another sign to be aware of is they smell so if you get a whiff of something it’s a good bet they are close by.

The upper Russian River was not too crowded but as we made our way closer to the confluence of the two rivers the people population picked up. Where we were was not all out ‘combat fishin’ but was crowded with people fishing almost shoulder to shoulder. We stayed on the river until midnight before heading back home. I had to work the next morning and Demitry had a plane to catch heading back to Salt Lake City. My problem was I had lost my glasses somewhere along the way and had to drive back that night with my sunglasses on in the twilight. It was not too bad but difficult coming through the mountains where the outside light was cut down somewhat. It was hard to see the dark moose as we drove by, luckily none were standing or crossing the road in front of us.

We were all in good spirits but exhausted as we made our way down my street. There were only a few things to do with the fish before we all crashed since everyone had to get up in abut two hours.

I made my way to work, Demitry caught his plane and headed back to Utah so he could be at work in mid afternoon, and Mike was able to start packing for his flight out to Shemya on Friday morning.

This trip reminds me of the days when we would come to the land of the midnight sun for a week of nonstop fishing, little sleep, and drinking in everything that is Alaska.

Summer, what a concept.

Ice