I somehow managed to skip posting about our fishing expedition! I mean, I am usually late on most of my posts, but I am very particular about doing things in order. So I missed this one and have decided to just post it late - we actually went fishing on the 31st of July for future recollection. :)
Matt went down to Bird Creek the previous week with some work friends and had a blast. After a last minute rush to buy waders on my lunch break, I was set to join in the fun after making dinner for mom and the kids. We made it before the tide came in, but it was still pretty crowded. We ended up being a tourist attraction for the people riding the train - I made sure to send a photo to my dad of the Chugach Explorer stopped to see us.
Matt spent a good chunk of time replacing the lures I kept getting stuck on rocks. But he did think to pull out his phone and get a photo of me in action. Which is right when a fish hit my lure! What an awesomely timed opportunity!
And I managed to get her out of the water! It was a pink, so we didn't keep it. I was so proud of my first fish in Alaska - go me! Of course the next day I was reading up on ethical angling and you aren;t supposed to pull them out of the water or hold the by the gills if you aren't keeping them. I'm pleading ignorance - and she managed to wriggle free before I got the hook out of her mouth, so it couldn't have been too traumatic... right?
Matt caught a pink too, but I am not as good of a spouse and didn't manage to get a photo of it! I'm awful! I did manage to get a photo of him later after the tide came in and we have moved upstream to wade in and fish.
I kept getting hits on the lure, but I just couldn't get them to stay on long enough to reel them in. But I finally got something on the line. I figured it was a twig because it was struggling on the reeling in. But no - I caught a rock! Haha - how on earth does someone catch a rock. Sam (Matt's coworker who was with us) decided that some people are obviously just made for a certain profession. Professional rock catcher, that's me! ;)
This was the spacing of the crowd. It actually was not as bad as I had feared. Most people were quite courteous with the fishing and if you did manage to catch someone else's line, someone would reel it in and free it. But they don't call it "Combat Fishing" for nothing - when we went the next night, I got hit in the arm with a lure after it fish on a taut line wriggled free.
Wear safety glasses people!
I only caught the one, but Sam managed to catch several pinks, a chum and a silver. He advised us against eating a pink, but thought the chum might be slightly better. It wasn't bad... but it was a pretty mild fish. The silver was less flavorful than the reds we have been eating, but it was still tasty!
Every time Matt has been fishing, the guides or friends have filleted the fish on the river. So we dutifully followed tradition and went about filleting the fish on the cleanest rock we could find. In the future, I think we will be doing some basic gutting at the river and do the detailed work at home. Especially after reading how bad it is to get the meat wet or get the slime from the outside of the fish on the meat - which is pretty hard to avoid when throwing everything in a bag to take home.
I was so excited about fishing trip #1 that I went out and bought a fishing vest so I could carry extra lures on me. I figured since I kept losing them, the least I could do was carry them. Probably because of that - I didn't lose a single one on Friday night!
Unfortunately, we didn't catch a single fish the second night... But it was such a beautiful night, that I don't think either one of us even cared. And for the record, I'm looking off to the distance in the photo because Matt kept making fun of my attempts at smiling. It was a long week - cut the sleep-deprived woman a break! ;)