The Red Salmon Are Running!

Last time, I told you about our float trip down the upper Kenai River fishing for rainbow trout and dolly vardens, also known as artic char.  We had been playing tourist around Soldotna while waiting for the red salmon run to begin.  We stayed with Gary and Marlene Turner, old friends from back in our Huntsville days.  Gary and I worked together at NASA.  He now runs Kenai Peninsula College, a community college with three campuses. 

We were out at the local Fred Meyers Marketplace store on Tuesday when Gary called and said his son Traye had stopped by to try out the waters. He had caught his limit of three red salmon in seven minutes.  They were running.

We hustled back to Gary and Marlene’s house and took the steep steps behind the house down the bank to Gary’s dock.  Gary and Traye were cleaning Traye’s fish.  Gary handed me a rod that he kept rigged for Reds, also called Sockeye, and showed me the technique.  When the fish return to the river after two to four years at sea, they are silver in color.  Gary had already told me not to expect bright red fish like the one represented in my hatpin.  They turn red only when they have reached their spawning lakes.  At that point their systems have been shut down so long they are ready to spawn and die.  “You wouldn’t want to eat one at that stage,” Gary said.

The time you want to catch a salmon is when they are still at sea or when they first enter their home river.  Like the Kenai, which is world famous for its salmon.  Kings, Reds, Pinks and Silvers, and probably some I’ve forgotten.  Gary had told me earlier that the boats I was seeing out on the river all week were mostly guides with parties fishing for King salmon.  These fish run up to 90-100 pounds, although people are happy to catch a 25-pound fish.  Well, yeah.  The biggest fish I’d ever caught before arriving at the Kenai was about 1½ pounds.  I thought it was a monster.

Gary won’t fish for Kings now, because he says their numbers are getting low and he wants to make sure his two grandsons have Kings to catch when they are older.  Reds, on the other hand, are plentiful. 

So its the Reds we have come for.  Because they have been eating plankton in the ocean, not fish or other lure-like creatures, lures are not effective on these fish.  They might hit a lure out of some vague thought lurking in the recesses of their species memories. But Gary says he’s takes only one a season that way. The technique instead is to take a few feet of 100 pound line and a few feet of 25 pound leader, and tie on a bare hook with a piece of fluorescent yarn on it. This serves as a visual indicator of where the hook is.  Then you add a good-sized lead weight to drag the line quickly to the bottom.  The fish hug the shoreline right against the bank and cruise along the river bottom.  So you flog the water in front of you with maybe 7 feet of this combination line.  You slap the line down onto the fast-running Kenai at your 11 o’clock and watch it sink right below your feet as it zips downstream a few feet.

You lead it with your pole held low just above the water. The fish swim with their mouths open, and there are so many that one is likely to hit the leader with its mouth as it swims upstream.  The leader slides along until the hook arrives at its mouth. When you feel a slight bump, you set the hook.  Now you have a 7 to 9 pound fish on your line, fighting for its life.  These fish are strong. ZZzzzzzzzzz. Out goes the line.

Gary and Traye pulled in fish with almost every cast.  It took me longer (left).  You only have the line in the water for perhaps five or six seconds before pulling it up and then lashing the water with it again.  Gary says, “You get into a rhythm.”  Plop, lift, plop, lift. The problem comes with the lift.  The fish are so plentiful down there that when you lift the hook up at the end of its swing downstream, chances are good that it will embed itself in something soft and silvery.  A side, belly or even tail.  It is not legal to keep a fish hooked anywhere except at the mouth, so you must land these snagged fish and return them to the river.

I landed one that got hooked in the tail; one that was hooked in its side, and one hooked in the belly.  They went right back into the river to continue on upstream.  My limit on Tuesday took maybe 20-30 minutes to land.  Gary had his already.  Then Traye showed me how to fillet the salmon, which with so many to do is sort of quick.  No fussing to insure you maximize the meat.  There isn’t time. Cut one side then flip it over and fillet the other.  Cut, flip, cut. Then you cut each fillet in half.  Gary says you can’t eat a whole one so he cuts four fillets from each fish.  They tossed the fillets from our nine salmon into a Rubbermaid bin, then covered them with paper towels and ice packs.  Traye took the bin up the tall steps to the house.

Gary decided we should take his boat out and check out the other fisherpersons along the riverbank.  The word had gone out instantly:  The Reds are in. The Reds are in. Paul Revere got less attention. People came out of the woodwork, crowding into Soldotna and Kenai looking for a place to stand on the shore and flog the water.  

Everywhere we looked we saw people reeling in fish.  It is an abundant harvest that will go on for weeks.  This harvest is the major economic driver for the area.  The towns along the river fill with people as fast as the rivers fill with fish. Hotels are filled to capacity.  Same with RV lots.  And starting July 15, at any given time the Soldotna Fred Meyers parking lot held perhaps 75 RVs.  I’ll bet Walmart in Kenai was the same. Maybe more so.

Cruising along the river in Gary’s boat we saw people lined up shoulder-to-shoulder in public places.  They call it “combat fishing (above).”  These folks had rods of every size and description.  Spinning rods, fly rods, and halibut rods. Bait casting rigs were the most common.  But if you had nothing else you could have used a bamboo pole with a string, leader, weight and hook tied to it.

After we got back, Gary and I went up to his workbench to do the rest of the processing.  We patted each fillet dry then put them in a pre-made vacuum bag and Gary vacuum sealed them in his commercial size Seal-A-Meal machine.

We were due to leave the next day, but Gary let me have one more shot at the river Wednesday morning.  I caught one good-sized salmon quickly (below), and then another that was foul hooked and had to go back. 

Then I spent half and hour doing nothing but plop, lift, plop, lift.  Gary finally told me the run was in hiatus.  I guess the fish stopped at Walmart to get something they’d forgotten at sea.  He pointed at a sandbar and told me he wasn’t seeing them crossing it like yesterday. That happens.  They come in spurts.

He had a meeting set up to attend with the contractors building a new technology center and dorm complex at his school.  So reluctantly, I gave it up.  The four fish I caught fit nicely in the fridge/freezer in the motorhome. I ended up with 16 fillets that weighed somewhere around one pound each. But the best part is that it is fresh. We saved half of the fish you see in the photo at left unfrozen to barbecue when we get to Homer. That's only a few hours from the river to the table.  Really fresh!

So Gary headed across the river to Kenai Peninsula College for his meeting and we started packing up the motorhome. He had taken us on a tour of the school the day before.  We were really impressed. It is a division of the University of Alaska so his title is director, instead of president.  Anywhere else he’d be a president.  I’m really proud of his success.  I’d like to think that his time with us at NASA had something to do with it.  But this is far from NASA. Here he has to deal with things here that few colleges down south experience. 

Last week, for example, he got word that the landowner living next door to the school had to shoot a brown bear, leaving Gary to deal with her two cubs running amuck on his campus.  A dangerous situation for students and staff.  And for all the construction workers.  He handled it.   The school is designed to fit the Kenai community.   It has heavy equipment to teach students processes used in the oil industry, where jobs are plentiful for people with the right skills. 

He also has injected art as a key element in most of the buildings.  Particularly student’s work. And I was impressed that he had used the land around the new dorm for play and exercise activities, keeping parking secondary.

But the neatest fit he has made with the community’s economy is the school’s Kenai Fishing Academy, which he started 11 years ago to teach anglers to fish effectively and responsibly.  He also played a key role in the development and operation of the Kenai Guide Academy that the state now requires all guides to pass in order to be certified.  A wonderful community service by a community college. It also explains why Gary knows so much about fishing and knows most of the professional guides.

On the way over to the school with us he stopped at the chamber of commerce and showed us some of the mounted fish they have there.  Huge fish.

So we had a terrific time with Gary and Marlene, and hope they will come visit us in the lower 48 states sometime.  But we’re not holding our breath.  They are pretty well grounded here in Alaska.  I doubt you could get them out with dynamite.  Nice people.

So that’s the fishing report from the Kenai River.  We are now about 50 miles south of Soldotna, down on the Anchor Point River near the town of Homer.  But that’s another story.

So stay tuned!  There is a lot of Alaska left to see.

John and Marsha

(All photos copyright 2013 by John B. and Marsha P. Taylor)