Friday Salmon Fishing

We pulled our sleepy bodies out of bed around 4:30 a.m. to get ready to go. We finished loading up the car, I kissed the kids goodbye in their sweet sleep and took off. While others fell back to sleep with the lull of the car, I alternated between talking to Kenny to help him stay awake, and reading my book. We drove for 3 hours until we reached Soldotna. It was chilly and overcast, but we were excited. It was my first time salmon fishing. Ever. In my life. Which is sort of crazy because of how often my husband has been. But last year I had a small, nursing baby so I didn't get to join in. And it's just not a good place to bring a bunch of little kids so we can't both go together without a babysitter. Thankfully we had Grandma Weston who was willing to stay behind and play with her grandkids.

 

We really had our hopes up high because Kenny's had a lot of success at this spot on the Kenai River. But after several hours of catching absolutely zero red salmon (a.k.a. sockeye), we realized we should lower our expectations. It wasn't just us, nobody around us was catching much either. We were really at the end of the run, so it wasn't going to be as successful as it had been if we were there a week before. Kenny caught a couple of dollies, and Andy caught a humpy, and Eric and Mike both had runaway fish that broke their line and took off. So we finally accepted that the fish were further up the river and decided to move on.

 

My view on my right: Kenny and Mike

My view on my left: Andy, Jeni, Eric

We grabbed some lunch and drove out to Bing's Landing. We asked around and nobody was catching anything there either. So we decided to go even further up the Kenai River to the confluence, where the Russian and Kenai rivers come together, by the ferry. This is what it looked like. Both sides of the river as far as our eyes could see was people spaced out just like this. So this is where the fish were! After spending their adult lives in the sea, salmon swim back to where they were born. There, they breed and then die within a week or two.

 After some more instruction from Kenny on how to do it properly, I caught the first fish within a few minutes. It was very exciting, but I did not like holding it like that. It's gross and I'm a wuss.

 

Jeni always catches the biggest fish :)

 See how this one is like a purple color? That means it's already spawned and about to die. It also means the meat is no good. Well, I don't think you'd get sick from it, but it doesn't taste good.

 

In the end, everybody caught one (except Andy, unfortunately so he took the picture because he refused to pose with someone else's fish :) haha) And Kenny caught two, but Mike had already fileted his by the time we took this picture, so he's pretending to eat his spawned out, raw fish, while holding Kenny's other catch.

 We had so much fun! It was definitely a new experience, but fun to be there and see Kenny in action. I really don't care for fishing that much, but he sure loves it, so it was fun to share in his passion with him.
Once we finished there we still had another 2 hour drive down to Homer, where we stayed in a hotel that night. The guys fileted our salmon in the bath tub and we were all exhausted from the day.

This is one of my favorite things about Alaskan summers--this fireweed! I assume it got it's name because it just spreads like fire because these flowers are just all over, lining the side of almost every road. It's so, so pretty!

close-up of the fireweed