Summer of mixed times . . . busy with a little fun thrown in.


This summer has been going in what feels a hundred miles an hour.  So many trips to different places for work with little time for doing the things that make this such a great place to live.

The last month or so has been a series of trips to inspect and visits the many projects going on around the state.  I have several on Kodiak island and several more scattered around the state so it has been one plane ride after another going from project to project.

Last week was to several jobsite visits on Kodiak and the weather was trying not to cooperate.  There were times of fog and rain showers in between times with millions of mosquitoes buzzing around my head.  It was something else wearing head nets while wondering if I should be in a full body “bug suit”.

I need to upload some of the pictures about the villages and trips but my internet service while out of town is totally lacking.  The brief time at home has me playing catch up to laundry, finishing house projects, and trying to have a bit of down time.

This past Saturday one of my old friends (he started out as a plumber apprentice for me in Atlanta) called out of the blue to invite me to go with him as his brother to subsistence fish (dip netting) on the Kenai River.  He left and moved to Alaska in 1994 a year before I left and headed north.  We both live here but haven’t kept in touch like we should.  It’s always a statement that we will call or do something together but with the busy times it seems like our good intentions get replaced for a time without contact and then run into each other and start the process over again.

We hooked up early Sunday morning around 5 AM with his brother and another friend for a drive down and a day in the rain fishing.  It was not too cold but there was a constant rain all day long with no breaks so were out in the elements for hours returning home around ten o’clock that night.  We had a productive “harvest” netting 106 Kenai reds between the four of us.

The fishing started out pretty fast and furious with two nets in the water, one person driving the boat, and the other person popping out the gills which bleed the fish and putting them in the cooler.  After filling one large 108 quart cooler and half of another it was time to anchor up and clean the fish to make room in the coolers.  We cut the heads off, cleaned the guts, and fed the seagulls flying around the boat.  After our first few runs the fish count was 59 and we decided to stop at 80 giving us each 20 fish.

The next drift pass had us around 83 fish so we thought we might possibly be able to get 100 fish in the boat.  The fish were everywhere as all the other boats around us were pulling in their fish while we continued to increase our count.  We stopped at 106 knowing we could easily top 200 if we kept going another hour or so.  Final count: 106 fish weighing approximately 10 – 12 pounds each.

We pulled the boat out with three large coolers filled with another 20 or so, on the floor of the boat.  We drove over to the new Super Walmart where we bought a couple of large totes and 30 bags of ice to keep them cold for the trip home.  I dreaded the cleaning part once I returned home after an exhausting day.  Fish would keep until the next day and while working today decided it would be better to take the fish to 10th & M Seafood for processing and vacuum packing.

My 26 fish with many already gutted and heads cut off weighed 138.8 pounds.  Totally awesome so freezers will be filled and there is still the silver salmon run to follow in August.  The fish should be processed tomorrow giving me time to get it in the freezer before heading out on Wednesday to Selawik, a village just above the Arctic Circle north of Nome.

I’ll try to get some pictures up before I leave but it may take me longer so bare with me.

Have a great week!

Ice

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