Tuesday, July 19, 2011

It's Been a Busy Summer...


I made a promise to myself that I was not going to go more than a week without posting to my blog. So, you can see I didn't fare well in that promise to myself. I feel like life since my last blog posting has been a long blur of events and stuff. The problem with it all is, that it hasn't been very notable, not the kind of stuff you want to blog about. So, with a schedule that has been driven by a constant flow of things that are not especially blog-able, I haven't posted for some time. Not that you were waiting on the edge of your seat for me to do so, but it's the principle of the thing.

As you can see, I finally did something blog worthy this week. Dipnetting season is upon us once again. Over the weekend we had a record count of sockeye salmon enter the Kenai River - 230,000 fish in one day! Highest count ever by Fish and Game. Unfortunately, it brought that many fishermen, campers, boats and gawkers to Keani as well. Might as well live in Seattle for all the traffic and congestion problems we have had around town. It was crazier than ever.

We did finally join the hordes on Monday after half of them went back to Anchorage in the worlds longest funeral procession ever (think 150 miles of bumper to bumper traffic). We caught our goal of 70 fish and this nice little king salmon to boot. I did a "first" for myself in bringing up a net with three fish in it two times in a row. That's about as much salmon as you want to hoist at one time by yourself. In a couple of minutes you have 6 thrashing, flailing large fish on the deck of your boat. It just doesn't get more fun than that in the bright Kenai sun. JoLynn and I stayed up late getting it all trimmed, skinned and vacuum sealed. Not bad, a year's worth of fish in one day and for the actual protein itself, free. There is an investment of time, gasoline, launch fees, vacuum bags, but hey, let's not quibble. By the way, out of the 70 fish, 30 was my take. That gives us 60 fillets to eat, smoke, and give away. Lots of fun.

So, I hope your summer is full of more actual fun than I have been having up to this point. However, it is hard to beat a day of dipnettng on the Kenai River with hordes of other boats, salmon slime, blood, goo all flying around and covering every surface in the boat, including oneself. Note: notice the cooler down by my feet, it's covered in the stuff I just mentioned.