From North to South: Dipnetting

What is dipnetting? Essentially for a few certain weeks each year... during the salmon runs... Alaskans (and only Alaskans) are allowed to stick big nets in the mouth of certain rivers and yank out salmon.

A couple of weeks ago Joshua, Megan and I gave it a go. For Joshua and I, it was our first time... but definitely not our last. It's a hoot and an excellent way to fill the freezer! We walked away with 24 huge, fresh, wild salmon... and that was only a quarter of our limit. Next year, we'll go prepared, and be able to complete fill the small freezer we bought specifically for dipnetting... this year it's 3/4 full.

A winter's stock of salmon aside... the activity itself was exhilarating. You stand there chest deep in the ocean... with full fishing attire on... admiring the ice-clad mountains in the distance and watching seals swim in the waves... and then all of the sudden a salmon swims into your net... and you begin a mad dash to pull the net out of the water before dinner gets away.

But when they're REALLY running... there's no time for calm moments of contemplation... it's just boom, boom, boom... dash into the water with a net, snag a salmon, muster all your might to drag the 10 pounds of wildly flopping fish out of the water, whack it over the head with the store-bought "wally whacker," hand the fish off to your on-shore partner to gut it and put it in the cooler, and then dash right back in the water to do it all over again.

There were a ton of other people out also, especially on Saturday, which was the first sunny day we had had in a while. Sometimes it was so shoulder-to-shoulder I couldn't even get the net in the water. Only in Alaska do people know the term "combat dipnetting."

We spent a couple of nights at the mouth of the Kenai River... and all in all, lived in luxury. The prior week Joshua bought a VW van (that he's had his eye on for three years) from a friend and we took that down with us. We also brought a vacuum packer and used (and almost drained) the car battery to power it... this meant we could gut, fillet, clean and vacuum pack on location... considerably reducing the work after we returned home.

Below are some snapshots. But for the professional photos, click on this link. It will take you to a few of Joshua's best photos of dipnetting, which we published on the Alaska Star Web site (and in the paper too.)

http://alaskastar.com/stories/072408/new_20080724007.shtml

WARNING: This is not an activity for those who like to be clean... nothing like crawling into your sleeping bag after a day of salt water and fish guts = )