First 2009 Salmon Fishing Trip

The Russian River.

Brother Glen and I played hooky from work on Thursday and drove to the Russian River to join the stampede for our part of the record setting Red Salmon run. It being Thursday morning when we arrived the fishermen lining the bank were 10 to 15 feet apart. For Russian River combat fishing that not too crowded. The wait in line to get into the parking lot at the ferry was only 40 minutes. Considering that the Alaska Fish and Feathers Department had doubled the daily bag limit to 6 fish, we actually stayed and joined our fellow fisher folk. This is unusual because as a general rule we hate combat fishing. We fished the Russian in our youth when the population of Southcentral Alaska was a quarter of what it is today. On more than one occasion in the last decade and as recently as 2 years ago we have made the drive, taken a look at the crowds and driven home without wetting a line. After our ride across the river on the ferry we found room and began trashing the water. All around us people were constantly hooking fish. Maybe 1 in 12 of the hook ups were legal, that is hooked in the mouth not snagged in the tail, back, or belly and could be harvested instead of being released. We each landed a legal fish in the first hour. For the next 5 hours or so the ferry brought another 25 people to join us about every 10 minutes. As the new people arrived the space between fishermen slowly shrank from 12 feet to 3. I gave up when the space between people got to 6 feet. I had at least 10 tangles with someone else's line. People were starting to get hooked by flying hooks and whacked with flying sinkers. I spent the rest of the afternoon watching. My brother lasted several hours longer than I but landed no more legally hooked fish. In the early afternoon an adult Brown Bear came out of the woods across the river and walked to the rivers edge creating an otherwise empty river bank as people pulled back giving him all the room he wanted. He seem unconcerned by the hundreds of people sharing the river bank with him. After a few moment he trotted back into the woods. At which time I remembered I had packed my camera in the back pack.

P.S. I forgot to take pictures not only of the Brown Bear but of combat fishing itself . If you've never seen it check out these links for pictures...

http://www.wildnatureimages.com/Combat_Fishing_Photos.htm

http://www.fs.fed.us/r10/ro/sd_notes/winter_07/russian_rv/bears_russian.shtml

http://www.sf.adfg.state.ak.us/Management/areas.cfm/FA/kenai.russian

Winter Wonderland II

I didn't take any pictures of the stupid snow. First because I had a long tiring week and slept in until 9 a.m instead of my work day 4:30 am. Then I lazed around the house until noon when I finally got out and fired up the snow thrower. Three and a half hours and a sore back later I was in no mood to take pictures of the frakkin snow. Besides in was a gloomy overcast day with no shadows so the pictures would have been damn near monochromatic anyway. Today I went to Anchorage with my girlfriend Kate and her brother to work on a property problem. That was a nightmare but I'll spare you the details. The trip home was similar to my October 24th post. It was snowing - freezing raining all day turning the highway into a skating rink. Predictably there were cars upside down in the ditch and bouncing off each other and the guard rails all the way home. It was another 3 plus hour ride home. It's Alaska! You'd think people would know how to drive in these conditions.

I finally dropped off Kate and her brother and headed home down the twisty country road that leads to TrippingOverMoose Ranch. About a mile from home I watched a Mini-van approach from a side road a couple hundred yards ahead of me. He caught my eye because he was going too fast to stop at the intersection he was headed for. I was right. When he touched his brakes the mini-van turned into a sled did a 200 degree rotation across in front of me and slid backwards off into the ditch across the road coming to rest with the drivers door firmly jammed into a tree. I carefully slowed and pulled into the next driveway about 35 yards beyond the street he had come from. I made my way back to the accident scene on foot to lend assistance. I arrived at the scene no more than 1 minute after the car impacted the tree. There was already another car stopped on the road right at the scene already. That car must have successfully pulled out from the same side road just after I went by. A woman was standing between the 2 cars directing a large group of small children as they climbed out of the car in the ditch and into the car on the road. The ditch diving driver, a man, was still in the drivers seat. I asked, " Is everyone alright?"
The woman, with a Russian accent answered, "Yes, Yes, " and then said something to the driver in Russian.
I said, " I just wanted to make sure everyone was OK!"
She said "Yes, Yes," spoke to the driver motioning to a bag on the front passenger seat. He clambered up and over the passenger seat grabbing the bag and getting into the backseat of the upright car with all of the children. She then got into the front passenger seat, slammed the door and they all drove away, leaving the car, headlights still on, leaning rejectedly into the tree and me standing on the side of the road in the falling snow. I figured they were late for a potluck or he had no drivers license, insurance nor english and damn well did not want to be there when an Alaskan State Trooper Arrived.

I finished my ride home, fixed something for dinner and fell asleep on the couch for awhile. When I woke I stood up and glanced out the front window just in time to see something move in the darkness just to the left of the porch. I quickly killed the interior lights and moved to the kitchen window in time to see a big healthy moose calf stop at the corner of my shed just on the thin edge of the light from the porch light. As I watched her twin stepped out from behind the shed and the two touched noses. Then their mama followed the first one out of the light and the three of them slowly walked down my driveway into the dark.

It's still snowing. Tomorrow more snow removal.