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Articles Tagged ‘salmon’

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Russian River Reds and Bears

Monday, August 14th, 2006

Hiked the Russian River with my friend Jan. I try to head up there a couple of times each summer to see the salmon jump up the falls – it’s always a cool thing to check out. It was tough to get a shot of a red in the air with the delay on digital cameras, so I just clicked away and took about 75 shots. From those, I did manage to get about 5 good pictures.

Lots of bear scat along the trail – and on our way back, this brownie was heading towards us and didn’t seem to want to get out of our way. We stood our ground (and made a bit of a fuss) and the bear was polite enough to yield the path to us.

falls.jpgbrownie.jpg

Posted in alaska, bears, salmon, Travel | No Comments »

Doin’ the Dip

Thursday, July 20th, 2006

Doin’ the Dip

My hometown, Soldotna, is on the Kenai River which supports one the healthiest wild-salmon stocks anywhere on earth.

When the salmon return to the river – tens of thousands of tourists also migrate up the asphalt river and there is a dis-harmonic convergence of supply and demand. Some 400 river guides take their clients out on small boats to try to land a king – it’s not uncommon to catch a 60+ pounder. The reds are also running now – and so the commercial fishermen set nets from shore and boats to make a living. And of course there are pukers – those folks that come down from Los Anchorage for the purpose of killing fish and stocking their freezers. Quite a few of these folks could give a care about anything else except drinkin’ and fishin’.

A few years back , the state let all AK residents harvest salmon with a dip net. These nets can be up to 4′ wide and can be used from the beach or from a boat in the lower part of the Kenai or Kasilof rivers. Last year, 2 friends and I netted 78 salmon in 2 hours. This year the salmon escapement is way low (they are closing the fishery tomorrow night until more fish get upstream) and we only boated 27 fish in 6 hours.

We counted over 200 boats on the river when we were out there – and for the first time in years, it was less chaotic than normal.

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