July 18, 2009

July 18, 2009

I have been told the run of red salmon is much better in the Kenai River. Feeling the pressure to catch a salmon, I figure I need some professional help, so I enlist the services of a fishing guide. The guide picks me up with his boat at 4:30am. It is cold and I am barely awake. Fishing for King Salmon requires a King stamp in addition to a license. We stop at four gas stations before we find one that is not out of stamps. How in the world can Alaska run out of fishing licenses during tourist season? Finally successful, we head to the boat launch where we meet another tourist joining me on the charter.

As we motor to our fishing spot we are surrounded by dozens of fishing boats. So much for wild Alaska. Both of us troll with a large plastic lure wrapped with a small slice of fish. Although we are officially fishing for a King, I am not expecting one. They are monsters and rare. I am expecting to get a couple Reds (Sockeyes). In talking to our campground host (from California), he said it took him five trips before he got a King.

Well I must be living right. I got a hit on the rod less than an hour into the trip. A big hit!! The line sang as it whizzed out of the reel. I start to pull in but the fish is running all over. The surrounding boats are trying to scatter but the fish runs to the other side of an approaching boat. I have to raise the rod high to let another boat pass under. The line also gets tangled with another fisherman’s. We cut his line. Luckily my line survives all the obstacles. Eventually after a lot of reeling, and aching arms, we net the fish. It’s a King and he is a monster. 46 inches long and it takes two hands to lift him!

The limit in Alaska for tourists is one King. So I have to leave the pole out of the water and watch my partner fish the rest of the time. He gets a hit but quickly loses it. He doesn’t get another bite the whole time. He goes home empty-handed, not even a Red. I would be big time depressed if it was the other way around. At trip end we take some photos, clean the fish, remove a gallon of fish eggs and take the biggest filets I have ever seen (12 lbs each) into Soldotna to be packaged and flash frozen by a processor,

When I get back to camp, Aimee doesn’t want to hear about my exciting news. She can’t wait to tell me about a moose and calf she saw in the campground. Later in the afternoon I try my hand again for a Red along the Kenai Riverbank in Soldotna. The only things I catch are numerous snagged lines with the fisherman at my right elbow.