July 14th

FISH COUNT: 111,692

Before the sun set yesterday, I had caught my limit!!! You read that right. I have finally started catching fish. There was a guy from the campground office that came by and asked if I had been catching fish. When he found out I hadn’t he looked at my line and rigged it up with more weight and a larger hook. That made all the difference. Gary also went to the local tackle shop and talked to that guy about what to use and he’s got his line rigged differently also. We have a lot of weight so that we can get to the bottom of this very fast moving river and larger hooks so when you get into one of these big fish, you have a better chance of landing it. I can’t tell you what a blast it was to reel in 3 fish all within a couple of hours. I have spent 6 days trying to catch just one and then finally I get 3 all at once! Crazy. The largest one was 10 pounds! That is the largest that either Gary & I have caught which means….. ehem… I have out fished the Great Kenai Catcher (aka; Kiddo)! He also only caught 2 yesterday to my 3 so I did not let him forget that this morning! Hey, this may not last long so I have to rub it in while I can.

Someone had told us that the fishing pressure is a lot less at night and the fish are very catchable around 10 pm. So we took their advice and last night around 9:30 we headed down to the river. Keep in mind that we had already been fishing from noon until 5 pm in the rain earlier that day. We took a break, got into some warm, dry clothes, had dinner and hot coffee and were back on the river in the evening. I had my 3 by 11:30 and Gary continued to try for his 3rd until after midnight. It was finally getting dark so he decided to give it up, but we still had to fillet 5 fish! That’s been an interesting job in itself. Of course we’ve never done it before and the last few days we have asked a lot of questions, spent time at the fish cleaning tables to observe the different ways it can be done, and practiced on the others Gary has caught. Some of these guys can fillet these huge fish in under 5 minutes. They all say, “you’ll find your own method”. The first few fish he practiced on were not pretty but last night I think he found his method and he was cutting off most all the meat and the fillets even looked pretty good! What a lot of work though! We did not get back to the RV until 2 am this morning!

I did not realize how physically exhausting this would be though. I don’t know if it’s the standing for so long in the cold (46 degrees), fast moving water, or if it’s being out in the sun or rain all day or the actual constant motion of casting and reeling, casting and reeling for hours, but both Gary and I are SOOO sore! Our back, our joints, our arms are tired….. Hey! You don’t think this has anything to do with age do you??

So yesterday’s catch will certainly help with the homebound package. We were able to get about 15 pounds of meat off the 5 fish caught so that brings our total up to almost 30 pounds!! Yahooooo!

Dave: Your suggestion is being thoughtfully considered. Of course salmon is not turkey! I guess we don’t have to be traditionalists, right?