Bounty from the Copper River

We drove down to Chitina Friday afternoon with some friends of ours from Fairbanks, arrived about 7pm and got camp set up. There were a TON of people all scattered around on the gravel/ silt bar. There was the full gamut of folks ranging from the giant RV people with generators, TV and martinis; to the families with tents like us. The wind was blowing like crazy, so it was a bit of a challenge to set up the tents, get the camp stoves lit and keep silt out of the food….but that’s just how the Copper River valley is sometimes. 

We drifted (used our dipnets out of the boat) for a couple hours Friday evening and picked up about 5 fish, it was pretty slow, so we decided to get a decent night’s sleep and start up again first thing in the AM. There were 11 other boats also drifting along the bluff, that’s the most people I have seen drifting over there in the last 5 years since we’ve been fishing that area.

So by 7am on Saturday Mike, Dan and I were back on the water (Margaret stayed w/ the sleeping kiddos) and on the second drift I netted a nice king! Yippee! We kept fishing in 2-3 hour blocks, then we would come in, cut fish, eat/ snack, swap crews and go back out. Our best drifts on Saturday were after lunch (15 sockeye in 2 hours) and after dinner (14 socks & 2 kings in 2 hours). We pulled the boat out on Saturday night and left Chitina yesterday morning.

After we got home we got the boat cleaned, fish all divided up, the king steaked up & frozen, some sockeye prepped for canning & smoking and collapsed into bed. Whew……

Tonight we’ll do the canning, smoking and finish freezing the remaining sockeye. Plus we’ll grill one up for dinner, YUMMMMMMM!!!

The four kids all did great, they would swap jobs (subduing the fish & clipping tails) and were big helps rinsing fish (after we did the gutting/ gilling) and loading the coolers….and they were total troopers about the wind and silt. None of the adults could wear our contacts, and the zippers on both tents took a beating….pretty funny looking at our zipper configurations by Saturday night.

We ended up with 48 sockeye and 3 king salmon, we split the sockeyes between the families and each family kept their own kings. It was a good steady weekend for us. There were a lot of people who weren’t having very good luck. We talked to a couple groups who were fishing the same area as us who only picked up a dozen or so fish ALL weekend long. Bummer.