WFO........

[The Kid]

… in Alaska!!! HAHAHA Gotcha! Yep that’s right The Kid actually fishes freshwater from time to time, and uses a FLY ROD every now and then. Anyways it’s about time someone posts something far different on this board so I am going to throw a wild pitch at you guys and write about my latest trip to the Kenai Peninsula fishing for Reds or as we would know them as Sockeye salmon.

To start I will say that there is no place like Alaska for us fish folk and outdoorsman. Alaska is a place where one can go anywhere and get the latest fishing and hunting reports. Everyone fishes in Alaska! Go to any restaurant and ask, “How’s the fishing been” and you will get a report as detailed as a Kurtfish report. There is a section in daily T.V. news stations giving reports on the bite status in the region. I mean c’mon! The place is full of people like me, obsessed with fishing.

The regulation methods utilized in Alaska are phenomenal and nobody knows s*** about how to maintain a fishing system better than an Alaskan. If anyone here can say they have an answer to how to properly maintain our fishing grounds you are full of yourself and need to step back and watch these guys at work. Alaskans care so much about their fishery, reporting poachers is like reporting theft in California. I would rather have any citizen of Alaska run our Department of Fish and Game then any person in the world. So to conclude my rant and move along, let me tell you all take notes from these guys because we don’t know anything.

Starting from day 2 of my trip I had a line in the river praying for a salmon to smash my fly fishing set up and own me. Well it wasn’t the day to withdraw from the Kenai Salmon bank quite yet. On day 3 and after an extensive lessen from a new friend of mine and commercial fisherman; I finally connected with a silver bullet. These salmon when hooked have the head shakes of a sea bass and the line stripping quality of a bluefin. They RUN HARD!!! Then you also have to worry about the current of the river, which is ripping, and get an 8-10 lb salmon netted. Talk about line screamers!!!

After a couple of days with a slow pick on the Reds here and there listening to how wide open salmon fishing usually is, I was kind of getting sick of hearing it. Then on Sunday the 17th IT happened. Man after calling the sonar fish count for salmon entering the river I crapped myself a little bit. The amount of fish that came on Sunday was 239,000. http://www.alaskaoutdoorjournal.com/...kenaisock.html That’s right in one day 239,000 came in the river. It was a near record run for the reds and they were huge too the size ranged anywhere from 6-12 lbers. From Monday until Thursday as a family we caught our limits no problem among 14 members and 3 fish each. You do the math!

We timed the bite really well and all we had to do was fish for 5 minutes and we were limited out. I took some video and I landed in 4 fish 6 minutes. Talk about wide f****** open. As a regulation method, the ADFG sent out an emergency increasing the limit up to 6 fish and allowed dip netters 24 hour access to catch reds. The ADFG has got this salmon run down to a science by closely regulating the amount of fish that are allowed upstream so as to have a great spawn but also not to overcrowd the salmon redds. If the river becomes overcrowded the mortality of salmon smolts increases and the amount returning in future years possibly may decline. Something I never would have considered. I thought that the more salmon the better, but as I said before Alaskans have got it down. Nearly 1 million sockeye salmon entered the Kenai River so far and leaving feels really uneasy for me. Alaska has become a home away from home and I will be returning next year.

The kill count for a week period of fishing the Kenai River for reds aka sockeye salmon is ¾ of a ton of salmon meat with nearly that amount released for a family of 14. 1500 lbs of fish all distributed throughout the members. An expensive trip well paid for in produce. Don’t bother asking for any though I’m going to be greedy with this stuff. Worth it’s weight in gold IMAO. So now that I’m back and getting into some real fishing we’ll see how WFO it can get.