Project Smokin!

So I have smoked some fish this year. I have this on hand, which is going to get shipped out sometime in the next two days:



I am planning on going to Valdez over Labor Day, and hopefully come back with many silvers, which means I need to clear the freezer, which is currently in this state:



Almost all reds, with a bit of halibut and one chum (the tiger striped one). I figure that it will take me four to five double batches to clear it out (probably four).

A duffel bag full of fish

55 pounds of fillets in a duffel bag.



In the cooler.













And I have 14 fish at the processor getting smoked and turned into lox. I am going to buy a canner and start canning fish today.

43 fish total, probably 175-200 pounds total fillet weight.

Kenai, Round 2

So I am heading out for the second weekend of dip netting the Kenai. I will be going out on the boat with KTG and The Moefather tomorrow, then hitting the beach with Fito and Lizza on Saturday. Hopefully I will have gotten my fish and will merely be running/cleaning/advising/taking pictures/video rather than getting my gear on and getting into the water.

The forecast is partially cloudy, with highs in the 60s and wind. Saturday is mostly cloudy with scattered showers. We will see.

21 fish to go.

I got this shirt at B & J's in Anchorage this afternoon.



It says:

Fishes Fishies!

Back from the Kenai, ended up with 29 reds after a marathon weekend. Very tired, more words and a write up to come tomorrow. Here are some fish pictures.

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Fish and fillets

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Fish!

And I'm Off to Kenai

It is now 2:25 am, I just got up from my nap and finished loading the car, and I am off in 5 minutes. I am going to stop and get ice and coffee and then hit the road, in time to be at the Kenai for the 6 am opener. I think my setup is promising, but needs to be tested. Pictures and a report to follow.

Dipnetting is Here!!!

I am leaving for the Kenai to go dip netting tomorrow after work. I am very excited about this fact. I got a total of 28 reds last year and I am hoping to limit out this year. For those of you who do not know what a dip net is, I got one and it looks like this:



If you say "But Josh, I can't see how big it is", here it is leaning against my bike:



Another shot of it:



I am very excited to get it in the water. 25k fish through the Kenai and 19k through the Kasilof yesterday (that is very good).

For those of you who did not eat some part of my reds last year, here is what they looked like:



Kenai red sushi



Lox on cream cheese and crackers



Sushi Buffet



Fillet pre super bowl sushi



Super Bowl Sushi Spread




It was very tasty fish. I hope to learn to smoke and can fish this year, in addition to the kippered, the lox, and the salmon strips.

In any case, I am leaving late tomorrow and will be back sometime on Sunday.

Life update

Well, the end of fishing season was a bust. The silver run was absolutely terrible. I only ended up with 5 on the season and only the first was a good sized fish.

So the tally for the year was
1 king - 24 lbs
28 reds - 320 pounds
5 silvers - 38 pounds

And I probably fished 70 days this year, with most of my fishing sessions being somewhere between 1.5 and 3 hours. However I did get in a good 20 or so days of 4+ hours of fishing.

Goals for next year (note that this includes proxy fishing):
Limit out on kings - 10 for the year. Seeing as Moesephus is getting a boat and Fido has both an suv to haul it with and a cabin on a lake to use as a base camp, I think I will be able to do this on the little su and the deshka, with some trips to whichever creek is hot on the parks highway.
Limit out on reds dipnetting. Got 28 this year. I want to get the full 60, as the allotment of salmon has disappeared rather quickly. I feel as if the supply will run empty sometime in February, if only because of the double secret reserve, which will soon be added to the mini-chest.
40 silvers. Moesephus' dad went to Valdez for three days and came back with 200 pounds of silver fillets. I want to do this at least once next year. Moesephus is talking about doing it the weekend of labor day, which I may have to do.

Poker.
I was on vacation and threw some duckets onto stars for the reload. I am back multitabling the 2/4 game to clear the bonus. Hopefully, by the time it is done, I will have enough to keep me going at 2/4. If I can run well for 8k-10k hands, I should be able to move up to 3/6 in relatively short order. While on vacation, I also finished 17/2600 in the 3r on stars, which I was pretty happy about. I am also going to try to devote more time (probably on the weekends, now that I am not fishing) to playing tournament poker, by playing the 3r and some other low-mid buy in nl mtts as well as the razz/stud/stud h/l tourneys. My goal is to have a tourney cash of over 1k and be playing 5/10 by the end of the year. If I put in 10,000 hands a month and play 40-50 mtts (total), I think this is attainable.

First Silver of the Year

7/31 Campbell Creek 1.5 hours
1 silver 12 pounds, 7 pounds filleted



Went and fished Campbell Creek, which runs through south Anchorage. Went to the spot off Arctic and Diamond where I fished last week (and caught a bunch of trout) and worked my way upstream. There was a large school (15+) of spawned out kings at one point. Some decent sized fish in the 25-30 pound range but just dark red all over and really beat up. Went up some more and found a nice undercut bank with deep water in it. Threw a #5 orange vibrex in and got him on the second cast. Man, the silvers can really fight. This fish made 3 good runs of about 30 feet before I managed to walk upstream to where there is a little kidney shaped island and beach him. Nice fish.

First dipnetting trip

Went to the Kenai on Friday with Treg and Adolf. Dipped from about 7:30 till 10:30 and got two. Dipped Saturday with Treg and a couple of his family members and got another 12, for 14 total. We got about 60 total, with Treg doing the brunt of the success, with 28. I lost about 10 fish total in stupid rookie ways. However, thats how you learn. Now I feel confident enough to go dipnet by myself.



More pictures after the break.

Me and the fish.


The filleting process is getting better. I made some ugly fillets early in the process, but slowly remembered what the hell I was doing.


I have been waiting a long time to have a freezer this happy.

2007 King fishing is done

The 2007 king season (at least for me, the season ends July 13th in most parts that I fish) is about done. The only thing left is the late kenai run and that requires a boat. Since I am already scheduled to go halibut fishing in a few weeks, I do not really want to go king fishing. Besides, I got a king this year, which was the goal anyway. Also, I am leaving to go dipnetting on the kenai on friday.
Day by day fishing report after the break.

6/28 - Ship Creek - 1 hour
Went at lunch with Pat. I actually misread the tide guide and timed it so that we would have been there for the high tide the week before. Next year I will master the "put the good tides on the schedule before the run starts" and catch a king at lunch.

6/29 - Eklutna - 3 hours
Two stories. First, this was the first day I said "why am I here, I should be fishing" at the office and had someone reply "so go fishing", which I did. Left early to beat the traffic out and got to eklutna around 4:15 and fished till a bit after 7.
Second. I had gone over to my buddy Dave's house and tried to get him to go fishing the night before and he did not want to do so. I told him he was wasting his summer and then bet him $10 that he would not go fishing the next day. At around 6:15 or so, I was tossing a vibrex, but getting pretty bored and he called to tell me he was fishing at eklutna, which was odd, because I had been there for over two hours and had not seen him. He was down on the knik river side and we met up and talked and then drank a beer in the parking lot and split.

6/30 - Little Siux - 6 hours
I head to Moesephs after spending the night at the cabin. While we are chillin he asks if I want to go fishing with his friend Jesse. We head to the point mackenzie launch and fished upriver of the launch. Nothing, but I did learn how to de-rock a jet boat engine after we ran aground at one point.

7/2 - Ship Creek - 1.5 hours
I broke down and did something I have not done in probably 15 years and should probably have done when Noah was here. I purchased and fish with a bobber. I picked up some slip bobber rigs and started fishing ship creek with eggs. I like the slip bobber setup because it allows me to fish much deeper than a regular bobber does. I have several people I have told I will teach how to fish during silver season and I think I am going to start them on slip bobbers because it is the easiest way to start them.

7/4 - Ship Creek - 2 hours
Got up at 9 to fish the early high tide - was there from 9:30 till 11:30. Floated eggs under a bobber without success. Not much going on.

Eklutna - 3 hours
Got there about 1 and left at 4. They opened the tailrace all the way to the plant discharge, so I threw a spinner right at the discharge with a dozen or so people. There was a couple families who had stayed and fished all night who had caught a few fish, but not much going on. There was a lot of carcases and dead fish.

- Interlude -
Then I got burnt out. Lots of fishing in a long period of time, and the fish were not running. I did not do any fishing for the next 5 days. Needed to recoup.

7/9 - Montana Creek - 3 hours
This was effectively the last day of king season (note kenai exception, which I will not be fishing) because the streams of the parks highway were only open till midnight.

I hemmed and hawed about whether to go and then my mom called and told me I should, so I bolted the office at 4 and hit the road. I left home base at around 4:30, stopped for gas near willow and got to the creak about 6:30. One guy pulled a blush 18# out right when I got there (I walked in with some very nice people) and that was the only fish I saw landed the entire time. Threw a tigerstriped mepps, then a pixee (at 3/4 it was the heaviest thing I had in the box, so I could get it out the farthest into the siux, as the water level was up), then finally a spin n glow, which was what everyone else was fishing.

It was a beautiful night out and I am very happy I went. When I was sitting at the office I asked myself "when is the next time you can go out and catch kings?" and I realized it will probably be a year before I can do so again.

I got my one king and I was very happy with that.


Now I go dip netting for reds on Friday.

Fishing resuts YTD

Results so far

6/16 - little Siux - 4 hours
Fished 2.5 miles from the spike off the Point Mackenzie with Noah and Moe. Water was up, no boats fishing anywhere near us, nothing.

6/17 - Willow Creek - 1 hour
8 pm Shoulder to shoulder, no spin n glos on me

6/18 - Willow Creek - 2 hours
6 am, shoulder to shoulder, relatively hot combat fishing

6/18 - Eklutna - 8.5 hours
9am to 1:30 pm. Fishing was hot between 9-12:30 or so, 11 kings came out.
10 pm-2 am. Dead, saw two fish landed. Some guy had told us that it was hot from 1-4 am, but nothing was hitting and we were tired.

6/20 - Elkutna - 1.5 hours - 1 King 24 lbs 16 lbs filleted
Was supposed to meet some friends who didn't show up. Got there about 8, fishing picked up at 9, my fish hit at 9:20 and was landed at 9:30 and was the 5th landed in the time I was there.

6/22 - Eklutna - 2 hours
4 pm to 6 pm, not much going on.

6/26 - Ship Creek - 1 hour
Not much going on, didn't see too many fish caught.

Just missed the right tide

Fished ship creek twice today, missed the tides both times.

6/28 Ship Creek - 2 hours
12 pm to 1 pm
Went at Lunch, not much happening, tide was low.
9:30 pm to 10:30 pm
High tide was at 8:30, so we just missed the window (Which Fish & Game had been saying was 1 hour before and 1 hour after high tide). Fish were running but the water was dropping fast and the mud was thick.

I think the plan is to get some of the european style slip bobbers and float eggs just before and during high tide. I am going to be hitting eklutna tomorrow, then the Little Siux, and/or willow, sheep and montana creeks this weekend.

Tight Lines.