Salmon Fishing

Since I have a brief period of internet connectivity, I thought I'd tell you about salmon fishing. We had entered Alaska just east of Tok and camped at a Tok RV park for the night. The hot showers were especially welcome after several days on the road. While there, we inquired about the status of the fishing and were told that the fish were running south of us.

We followed the Tok Cut-Off (route 1) down to Glennallen and talked to some fishermen who were getting gas. They put us on to a spot just down the road at Copper Center where the fishing was getting good. The slamon come to different streams at different times, depending on species and how far they have come. The salmon come in from the ocean and swim over 1850 miles upriver, all the time without eating. This takes quite a bit of time. They start as early as May but don't get to some of the streams until late August or into September. So different streams offer fishing at different times and the trick is to get to a stream that has the fish running when you get there. The run was just getting under way at the Klutina, the stream at Copper Center, which is a tributary of the Copper River, one of the major waterways.

At any rate, we decided to try to catch some almon and two of the group purchased one day licenses while the rest of us were the cheerleaders. We drove down to a bridge crossing where there was a fish camp that had facilities for RV parking. We paid $25 for an overnite and they even loaned us a rod and showed us what to do. As we approached the river bank we saw the above stringer of salmon lying in the water so our hopes were high. Incidentally, that stringer grew to hold eleven fish on it before it broke loose from the bank and floated on down the river without anybody noticing it.

Since the fish don't feed, the technique to catching them is to submerge a line along the bottom and hope to snag them. Since they swim with their mouths open, the line will catch in their mouth and then run through it until the hook catches and it's fish on. Then you drag them onto the bank and club them over the head and remove the hook. As you may imagine, this is 5% technique and 95% luck. But if there are enough open-mouthed fish and you keep flinging that line over and over, you may get lucky and catch your salmon. The first of our party to score was 12 year old Addie. The fish was 24" long.

We met a man who had fished there for years and he had several salmon on his stringer as he left to go and he gave us a couple for our dinner. I cooked them on the grill in butter with a little rub sprinkled on them because we didn't have any lemon pepper. They were just excellent!

At the cleaning table we met Patrick Olson, a native professional fish filleter (is that a word?) who could clean and fillet a salmon in about 3 seconds. He was just amazing to watch and gave us all lessons in how to do it and how to determine when a fish had started to rot and how to judge the roe to get the best caviar. I filmed him but I'm limited to 100 meg film clips here and that one is way too big.

So that's a quick look at salmon fishing. In all we caught five fish to put away in the freezer. Even though it rained the whole time we had a great look at an Alaskan fish camp and how to sample the salmon. We caught Copper River Sockeye Salmon but there were also King and Red salmon in the river. Here's a look at a catch from a crew that went on a float trip. You can see the Sockeyes like we caught but also a Red and a King and how much bigger they are.

Right now we are in Palmer, AK at the Town & Country RV Park. They have clean bathrooms with hot showers and a laundry and free WiFi. This is the first complete setup we've been able to enjoy since the start of the trip. We've been at a couple of campgrounds for the night and they had good bathrooms and showers but somehow a fiber optic able got cut and had all of easter Alaska out of WiFi for a while and my hot spot can't seem to hook up so I've been completely cut off from the internet almost from the start. And will be again once we move away from here.

We are about 55 miles north of Anchorage and we will travel into there today for some shopping and sight-seeing and to pick up another member of our party who is arriving late tonight by air.

Incidentally, I read a lot of warnings about the rain and the mosquitoes as I was preparing to pack. I'm prepared for the rain and the mosquitoes are at least as bad as I was warned. We are continually swatting them in the bus and it's just not pleasant to take a walk outside. The temperatures up to this point have been cooler than I would have liked. Days have been in the mid to upper 50's and low 60's and nights have dipped into the low 40's. Not nearly as bad to deal with as the scorching heat of the first three days but still not entirely comfortable. I'm going to purchase some more warm clothing.