May 22-July 10, 2012

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Fishing-Day 2

A restriction had been placed on King salmon. No live bait was allowed and you could only keep a fish under 20" or over 55". In other words, unless you caught a very immature fish, or a trophy fish, you were going to have to release it. You couldn't even take the fish out of the net. I was ready to go halibut fishing again, but high winds were forecast, and after yesterday, Mike thought it would be miserable to go back out in Cook Inlet. So...even though we had the restrictions, we went King salmon fishing on the Kenai river.



The river is glacial runoff and a very pretty shade of green. We launched the boat around 6 a.m. and trolled the river in Mike's secret spots... ;) and about an hour into the morning, I got a strike. Mike is a good teacher...let the fish run with the line...make sure you keep the line taunt...tire him out. I would think I had him...get him close to the boat, and then he would take out more line and we would do the whole process all over again. The fight was about 15 minutes long, and he finally gave up and Mike netted him alongside the boat. He estimated the weight to be about 45 pounds. Flat Stanley took a good look at him and told me, "Okay, let's let him go and come back in two years and catch him when he weighs 75 pounds.". Sounds good to me.


We didn't see any King salmon caught on the river that were keepers, though there may have been a Sockeye or two caught. We saw Bald eagles and at one point, a female moose lumbered down into the river and swam across. You might think they are such big, clumsy animals t they would have a hard time swimming, but she made good time getting across the strong current.


Fishing for King salmon was a lot easier than the fishing I did yesterday for halibut. There were no swells, and the boat was not rocking and rolling. Mike would run the boat up to one of his favorite spots and we would drop the line into the water with a shiny, spinning jigger maybe a foot from the hook. A little farther up the line was a weight. The line would stretch out behind the boat in the current and that spinning jigger...designed to make the fish mad...would tempt them to bite at it to get it out of their way. That said, it CAN be cold on the river...we were all bundled up pretty good, and I noticed my fishing mates all took a nap at some point during the morning. I had on a hat that Mike's sister Becky had knit for me...I absolutely love it!


In the next few days, I will post a couple more times to wrap up this adventure. It is over...I am home, chillin' and watching a Mariners game. The Rodriguez has been put together and I have sorted through my mountain of mail. I didn't ride for three days, and that was long enough...I'm back in the saddle and loving it.


Maybe you can't...because you won't...

No comments:

Post a Comment