Number Four in my Top Ten Favorite Things About My Alaskan Trip - Salmon Fishing!!

I don't fish. I've never fished. But I really enjoyed watching the fishing and eating the fish. "Flipping for Salmon" or as it is affectionately called, "Combat Fishing" is fun to watch. To avid anglers, fishing the Kenai is the ultimate fishing experience, and I just sat and watched! We fished on the Kenai right at the city of Kenai where Pat lives and on the confluent of the Kenai and Russian Rivers.




Combat fishing got its name from the crowded conditions during salmon run. Not only did the anglers compete for good holes on the Kenai and Russian with other anglers, they had to be aware of bears fishing in the same area. These pictures were shot on a day when nine bears had been spotted in the area. Our guys saw them on the bank several times. You can click on the link to Pat and Melissa's blog and go to July Archive. There you can not only see some great fishing pictures during the peak of the season, you can see a picture of Pat standing in the middle of the river fishing and an Alaskan brown (grizzly) bear eating a fish on the bank! Fishermen were required to have their catch and lunch no more than an arm's length from them or be liable for a $300.00 fine!





Son, Pat and son-in-law, Rusty fish the Russian.






Some nice reds!

We fished for three kinds of salmon: red, silver and pink:

Red salmon or sockeye salmon are silver or iridescence while in the ocean and begin to turn red prior to spawning. Once they turn red, they are not worth keeping. The dark red ones in the pictures will be returned to the river as they are too "mature" to keep. They would be mushy to eat.


Silver or coho salmon are the most acrobatic when caught and fun to catch - so they say. They do begin to turn darker before spawning and become less edible. Both sockeye and cohos are most desirable to catch. The guys caught silvers when they floated the Swanson River.

Pink salmon, although not nearly as acrobatic as the Silver or as tasty as a Red, are still fun to catch and the large females can be good smoked or canned. The locals don't even bother to keep them. Interestingly, they only come to spawn on even numbered years. Phil caught them in abundance on the Kenai - probably twenty in one day but most were males and we decided we didn't want any more. They are heavy to pack up the trail and are a lot of waste. We did smoke a large batch of them and I would have canned some had I known how easy it would be and how abundant they were. Pat taught me how to smoke them. Smoking actually included pickling in a brine, smoking and then dehydrating them.
We also filleted one and fried up chunks for several days. It was very "tender and mild in taste". It was delicious! I don't care what those spoiled Alaskans said!

An afternoon's catch on the Kenai River included reds and pinks



This silver and the rainbow were caught on a lake. This is a neat story! Log on again in the near future to read it! By the way, I like to show this picture and say, "Pat's fish (to the left) and Dad's fish (to the right!)



On Quartz Creek

Between our halibut and our salmon, we had a nice mess of fish to cart home! This is what we did: Each night we took our daily catch (as most do) to the local packer who fillets them, flash freezes them and vacuum seals them. They will keep them until you pick them up or have them ship it home. We purchased a small freezer which rode home in our pick-up. Several times a day we would plug it in to our 5th wheel while our generator was running. This worked quite nicely and was less expensive (even after purchasing the freezer) than having it shipped.