A summer day in Alaska means fishing for fresh salmon on the Copper River.
It means fishing ALL DAY on the Copper River.
It means really feeling that we are Californians and not local Alaskans at all when we do not catch anything. (even though we had been vacationing in the forty ninth state for two weeks at this point, shopping at Fred Meyers and paying ten dollars for a package of Oreos. We had felt like we were becoming locals until today)
Our third day of our Alaska adventure in 2004, we took a river boat sightseeing trip down the Susitna River. The river trip was really fun. Our two tour guides were about our age and they both seemed like really fun people. After the tour we all agreed we should have seen if they wanted to get a beer with us in town that night. But I guess we are all too shy. We did take an awesome picture with one of the tour guides welding her shotgun; ya know in case of bear attacks.
It was a great day to be out on the water. We saw a bald eagle in her nest, although the picture just turned out blurry. Most bald eagles die in Alaska, not at the hands of poachers but they actually drown. They hook their talons into salmon, and their talons can’t detach and if it’s a big fish, forty pounds or so, the salmon will actually pull them under; pretty incredible. All this talk of forty pound salmon made me want to catch one. So the next day we would fish for about twelve hours straight. We did take a pizza break, of course at Mile High Pizza Pie. It was the best pizza in Alaska, how could we not go back again?
We picked up our fishing gear in the early morning our fourth day in Alaska and found a great spot on the riverbed. We were ready to catch some Copper River King Salmon. You’re only allowed to catch three in a year and when we first threw our hooks in, we thought for sure we would catch our limit that day. All around us people had salmon on their lines, and the red fish were huge! We fished for almost twelve hours, and the closest we got was when Ryan was almost pulled into the river by what must have been a huge King Salmon. Luckily he was wearing board shorts, and believe me we got a ton of weird looks from the locals because of it. We seemed to get weird looks wherever we went actually. At the end of the day, we did not have any salmon to flash freeze and mail home. I guess my Alaska souvenirs would just be post cards, lupine seeds, cool belt buckles and lots of sourdough starter.
This week I am linking up once again with fellow bloggers over at Yeahwrite.me for a weekends worth of moonshine blogging good times!
Comments
I have recently been wanting to go to Alaska. It just looks so majestic and pristine…thanks for sharing the pictures!
Wow, that’s incredible about bald eagles getting pulled under by salmon. I knew salmon were secret badasses.