The moose on way home from salmon fishing
---------------------------------40 lb King Salmon
Fish eggs used as bait for Kings
--------------------------------------------------------------Larry, Delane and Leroy
Our charter boat(a drifter boat)
Sat July 24, 2010. Today was our Salmon Charter. Larry ran down to the General Store in Ninilchik to find out if he could get the line on his reel changed to a heavier weight line as he and Jim our neighbor next to us are planning to go fishing tomorrow. When Larry went to the store, I told him to pick up bread and eggs. When he returned he had neither because he said the bread was $7.39 a loaf and the eggs were over $5 a dozen. HOW do people live here at these prices ??When he got back we packed our lunch and all of our cold and wet weather gear and drove the 20 miles down to the Kasilof River to meet up with Tom our guide for today. Our charter was due to leave at noon and shortly after we arrived Tom came pulling in with our Salmon boat in tow. There were several other charters getting ready to leave as well so the launch area was pretty busy. We met up with Delane and Leroy the other two signed up for the charter with us for today. We had met Leroy at the RV Camp last night so we introduced ourselves to Delane and we all boarded the boat and found our respective seat for the day. Larry and Leroy sat in the bow of the boat and Delane and I in the middle. Delane is 74 years old and has had prostrate cancer and Leukemia so he has had a lot of chemo and not in the best of health. He is a wonderful person and was very interesting to talk to. He was a music teacher for several years then returned to school to study computer science and worked in setting up a large network for some type of farm services. Leroy is 70 but seems to be plenty healthy. He is a farmer, semi-retired, and both he and Delane are from near Omaha , Nebraska.
We had not been on the river long when Delane got a King Salmon on his line. How exciting it was to watch him struggle with the fish trying to wear it out enough to reel it into the boat. He would work on reeling it in and then the fish would take off and pull the line out again and again! By the time he got the fish up to the boat close enough for Tom to dip it, he was clearly exhausted. His fish ended up being a 20 lb King Salmon. We were all pretty impressed that Delane was strong enough to land the fish. We continued down the river with Tom instructing us when to reel in our lines and when to put them out and each time, he would add new bait on our lines. He was baiting our lines with Salmon eggs gathered from previous female catches. The eggs were mixed with some type of chemicals that made them stick together and also when he put them on our line he just wrapped the line around them once and they stuck perfectly together and stayed on the line when we let our lines out again. It was amazing to see how this worked. I found a rubber glove in my rain suit pocket left there from our Canada fishing trip so I was joking that it worked great for baiting the line and taking the fish off--if you were a sissy. Then I saw that Tom was wearing rubber gloves to bait our lines so I joked him about being a girly girl. He then told us that the chemicals mixed with the eggs stained everything it touched and was not good to handle without gloves. As we ventured down the river we ran into many other charter boats and all the guides were wearing rubber gloves to bait the hooks as well. Tom said the stain gets on your skin and lasts a week or more. The boat we were in was probably about an 18' boat and was very curved up in the bow and is called a 'drifter' boat. Tom said the design made it easier to manauver through the river as it kinda sat on the surface of the water and drifted along rather than sucking down tight on the water. The river had a rather swift current up at the top where we boarded and we just kinda drifted along the river. Tom would row us into a salmon 'hole' and we would let out our lines and set for awhile, then he would pull anchor and we'd drift a little farther. Most of the places we would stop there were several other charter boats stopped as well. Tom told us when anyone near out boat got a king on his line that all of us should reel in. The reason for this is because the salmon fight so hard and run every direction and they do not want the other lines out in the water to get tangled as the fish is struggling. During the day we witnessed several kings being pulled in among all the boats but Larry and I did not even have a strike on our poles.
We were a little beyond half way down the river when Tom explained the bathroom routine to us. He told the guys he had a coffee can in the back of the boat if they choose to use and for me he would pull over to the shore. I had asked in the office on Friday night about the bathroom arrangements and the girl told me that about halfway down there was a port-a-potty that they could stop at IF I needed to do so. Well as Tom is rowing toward the shore I'm looking for this port-a-potty and when he stopped he told me to go up the bank and do my thing. I climbed up the bank and looked around and all I saw was trees and weeds. I found a clearing and went then realized when I got back to the boat my shoes were wet up to the ankles from the water in the marshy area. I got back in the boat and he told the guys they could either go up the bank or use his coffee can. Larry and Leroy chose the woods. When we came home tonight I told Larry that the entire state of Alaska must be a considered a port-a-potty as the girl had indicated.
We were drifting along and Tom pointed out two moose that had come down to the water to eat and we saw several bald eagles and thousands of sea gulls, of course. The other boats along side us were pulling in a king now and then and we'd all have to reel our lines in until they landed it. We finally got to the last salmon hole called surprisingly, 'the last chance', and the tide started coming in. Tom said this was the place we'd catch our king as when the tide comes in it sweeps a lot of them into the river. We all had our lines in and Delane got a strike but missed hooking the fish. Then we sat there almost till the tide had receded and Leroy got a strike, hooked the king and struggled with him until I thought he would drop from exhaustion. He worked and worked on reeling him to the boat and just when he would get him up to 4 or 5 feet of line the salmon would take off and run and pull his line back out. This went on for a very long time and by the time he got him to the boat he was almost in tears from the pain in his hand and arm. This king weighed in at around 40 lbs. I don't think I have ever seen a 40 lb salmon prior to this. Needless to say Leroy was very proud of his catch. It was time we should have been heading in but Tom was pretty upset that Larry nor I had caught our fish so he asked if we wanted to stay a little later. We said fine but he did not have to stay for us. We stayed and fished and rebated and fished and came up with nothing! At about 8:00 we headed back to dock. It was almost 2 miles that Tom rowed up the river to the dock area where one of the other guys from the charter had driven his truck and boat trailer around to pull our boat out. The bank at this launching area was very steep so getting the boats out of the water was rather different. This process was very interesting also as when one boat was pulled out, they would hook a line onto the back of the truck and that truck would pull up another boat, and on and on this process went until all the boats were out of the water and loaded.
We all hauled ourselves into the truck and Tom drove us back to our cars. We were all freezing and wet and Larry and I ran the heater in the car on the highest setting the entire 20 miles back to the RV campground. On our way back to the campground we had an encounter with another moose. He was just on the very shoulder of the road grazing on grass. It was still pretty light out at 9:00pm but because it had rained all day was rather overcast and a little hard to see as the window was fogging up. We didn't really have an encounter with him but we stopped and did get a very close look at him. It was another bull moose which Tom had told us was pretty unusual to see in this area as they were mostly small males with button horns or females. This guy was defiantly decked out in a huge rack! This is either the second or third bull we have now seen. They are so majestic to look at it is hard to believe they can be so dangerous. Well we got home, dried off had a very light snack, and I went to bed and slept so sound nothing could have brought me back to life. I had had a much more fulfilling day than I needed. I was exhausted and I know Larry was as well. Nine hours of the cold and rain was more than I would have liked but the day was very educational for me!
No comments:
Post a Comment