Story - Novices Go Fishing for Reds (Salmon)

Summary

This is the story of my husband’s and my experience when our neighbor took us fishing for Reds for the first time.  We thought the story was funny enough that true fishermen would find it funny and others would find it interesting.

The Story

We moved to Homer Alaska at the end of the 2012 summer season.  When we decided to mover to Alaska, I decided I wanted to try all the local specialties, salmon, halibut, moose…  Unfortunately, it turns out it isn’t that easy.  Unlike the fishing communities in the lower 48, there is no fish market at the docks and people don’t sell the fresh-caught salmon and halibut to anyone but the commercial companies.  Apparently, the market in Homer just isn’t big enough to make it worthwhile.  It also seems that you can’t buy moose, you can only hunt it.

In 2013, we decided we wanted to go fishing, but we really don’t know much about it.  Most of the season went by as we did other things, but then we got lucky!  Our next-door neighbor (Bill) was going to fish for Reds (also called Sockeye) and invited us along. 

Needless to say, we didn’t have any of the fishing gear or equipment.  Well, with one exception; my mother-in-law gave me a fileting knife for Christmas when she found out we were moving to Alaska.  So, we packed our big cooler and my knife, and joined Bill at his house.  He had an extra pole that he loaned us for the day, so we were set.  We all set off for the Kenai River--nearly a two-hour drive from Homer.

First we drove up Funny River Road to a facility that has parking and an access point for fishing on the Kenai.  It was packed!  There were so many people they were running synchronized casting.  It was very intimidating to someone whose ability to cast a line was iffy at best.  After seeing that, Bill decided to try a “classified” fishing spot a friend of his had shown him.  This spot was another 15 minutes away.

We got to his fishing spot, put on the thigh wading boots, grabbed the fishing poles, the bonk stick, the net and our lunch and headed for the river shore.  The trail to the river ended at a bank about 10 feet above the river edge.  There was a big, thick rope strung down the nearly vertical bank.  We belayed down the rope to the beach and set up.   We were lucky that day; there was no one else there!

Now, there are a lot of websites that talk about how to catch a red, so I don’t intend to try to teach anyone with this story.  Still, it was quite a new experience for us. 

At this point, you have to understand.  The only fishing I’ve ever done was with a child’s pole, and tiny weight, a bobber, and a fish hook with a worm on it in a small pond in Indiana.  At that time I was fishing for catch and release Blue Gill that didn’t even weigh a pound.  Chris had done a little fishing in Colorado where the only difference was an adult pole and salmon eggs instead of night crawlers.  We had no idea what to expect from fishing for Sockeye that weigh 6+ pounds (Kenai Reds were on the large side of average this year).  So when Bill handed us a rod with a weight and an F-4 hook and said, "just throw it out and reel it in,"  we thought he was crazy!  However you can't argue with success.  All three of us got our limit in about 2 hours.

It turns out, when fishing for reds in a river, you set up your line with a heavy weight 3-4 feet from the hook.  You do NOT use bait.  That is the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard of!  Instead, you cast the line into the water and slowly real it in.  When (if) you feel the fish on the hook, you jerk the line to set the hook in its mouth.  Then the fun begins!   The fish takes off down (or up) the river and it is amazing how hard it is to reel in a 6+ lb fish.  I swear they feel more like 15 lbs at that point.

I lost my first catch, but with a little help, was successful in bringing the next fish into shore.  Fortunately, I had friends.  Bill grabbed the net and scooped the fish out of the water.  By the way, when we tried it, we found out this is not as easy as it sounds.  If you try to scoop the fish by moving the net, you scare the fish and it heads back out to deeper water.  If you try to hold the net still in the deeper water, the current grabs the net and drags it down stream.  The right way to do it is to put the net in the water at the bottom of the river as deep as you can manage (about 1 ft depth) and down stream from the fish while the person with the fish guides it to the net.  Ideally the fish slides over the net and you scoop the net up and around the fish.  We got pretty good at it by the time we'd caught our limit.

The next step is to make sure you caught the fish legally.  The hook must be in its mouth and not in some other part of its body or you have to remove the hook and let the fish go.  You also have to have a legal fish.  For example, this year the King salmon run was weak and King fishing was shut down almost before it started.  We did actually catch a King, but since King fishing was closed we had to release it.  That doesn’t actually bother me.  I’d like to have huge King runs in the future and that won’t happen if we don’t give them a chance to recover.  I also caught a trout.  I could have kept it (you can in the Kenai River), but I'd hooked it in the fin instead of the mouth, so we had to let it go too.

After we caught our red and got it onto the shore, it was time to deal with what I consider the sad part of fishing.  The fish has to die and you have two choices.  You can let it suffocate or you can hit it in the head and kill it fast.  We choose to use the bonk stick (a fancy Billy-club) and kill it quick.  I'm squeamish about this part; if I miss my shot, which I do frequently, I have to keep hitting it until it dies.  I hate it.  After the fish is dead, it gets easier for me and worse for my husband.  He gets grossed out by the gutting and filleting.  So we made an agreement; he hits them and I gut them.  It works out just fine.

The limit when we went out was 3 Reds per license.  We caught our limit is less than two hours.  My husband and I came home with 6 fish for nearly 25 lbs of Sockeye salmon.  At $17/lb or more that was a very good day!  Now we have a lovely combination of smoked and fresh salmon in my freezer to last until next year’s salmon seasons starts!  Next year we’ll start fishing when the season starts instead of just before it ends and we should have a lot more salmon in the freezer!