Alaska's rite of passage

I stood near the City of Kenai boat launch watching the two-foot high, southwesterly wind-generated, white-capping waves breaking against the launch ramp. The waves reminded me of rolling surf breaking on a tropical beach, only the temperatures were hardly tropical. I was getting chilled standing in the stiff, gusty wind. The slowly setting sun, hidden behind a gray and overcast sky, did little to warm the air.

Sockeye salmon were jumping all over the mouth of the Kenai River, around the commercial fishing boats moored out in the river in front of the city dock and as far up-river as I could see from my vantage point. Several shore-based dipnetters were sweeping their nets a quarter-mile upstream from the boat ramp and were regularly picking up a fish or two.

As each dipnetter landed a fish, he would turn and make the 100-yard walk out from the chest-deep water where he had netted the fish to his cooler on shore, deposit the fish and make the long return walk back out to his spot. That seemed like a lot of work for one fish, I thought. I had driven down from Big Lake earlier that mid-July day, towing my 16-foot riverboat, to try my hand at dipnetting from the boat for a few of these large and apparently plentiful Kenai River sockeyes. I had never dipnetted the Kenai before, either from shore or out of a boat. I had purposely avoided the Kenai personal use dipnet fishery because of the storied large and, at times, unfriendly crowds and occasional lack of fish present during the dipnet openings.

All of my previous dipnetting trips had been out to Chitina with a couple of guys I had worked with. However, Larry had passed away in 2002 and Tom had recently had some lifestyle-altering surgery. If I wanted to dipnet this year, I needed to either find new partners or a new location or both.

My hunting partner from Big Lake, Doug Ferrett, and his family were down on the Kenai Peninsula for a family vacation. Prior to their leaving on their trip, Doug and I had discussed getting together and dipnetting on the Kenai. As we had arranged, I met Doug and his youngest son, Luke, earlier that day in Sterling. We were planning to hook up again at the boat launch and, hopefully, put some fish in the freezer on the evening tide. When Doug and Luke arrived about a half-hour past high tide, I delivered the bad news. I was not comfortable taking my 16-foot, flat-bottomed riverboat, with a jet-unit outboard out into two-foot, white-capping waves, stacked one on top of the other from the wind.

The boat was not designed to safely operate in those conditions and the water was just too rough to allow two people standing in the bow to maintain their balance while trying to handle dipnets. This trip was supposed to be fun and not become potentially life threatening. We would try again on the morning high tide, hoping the weather forecast was correct and the winds would reverse direction and lay down somewhat overnight.

I woke up a couple of minutes before the alarm was set to go off at 4 AM the next morning. When I went outside to look at the weather, I was greeted with a broken overcast sky and winds that appeared to be almost calm - just the conditions we were hoping would develop.

I met Doug and Luke at the parking area on the downstream side of the Warren Ames Bridge where they had parked their vehicle. Dipnetting from a boat was allowed in the section of river between the boat launch and this upstream bridge. We drove over in my truck to the boat launch and quickly had the riverboat in the water. I was surprised at how few boats were launching at that time. We were about an hour before high tide and planned to fish through the high tide and for a couple of hours on the out-going tide. With the apparent lack of effort being exhibited by the locals, I wondered if we might have "missed the boat" on the jumping sockeyes from the previous evening and were wasting our time that morning. Since this was our first time dipnetting on the Kenai River, Doug and I both figured this morning trip would be a "learning experience," if nothing else.

We motored upriver to an area about a mile or so below the bridge, having passed a few boats down closer to the river's mouth. I don't remember seeing a single boat upriver where we were thinking of dipnetting. Again, I wondered if we were doing something wrong.

While waiting at the boat ramp the evening before, I had talked with a few local dipnetters launching their boats. One man told me the best place he had found for dipnetting from a boat was along the south side of the river, about a mile below the bridge and continuing downriver to the pipeline at the big bend. That was where we were headed, but with no other boats around, I mentally speculated whether he had given me "tourist directions" to keep me off the better spots. I figured we'd find out shortly. When we reached the area where we planned to fish, Doug and Luke moved to the bow and readied the dipnets. Doug was using my Chitina-style long-handled dipnet and planned to work the shallow side of the boat. Luke was going to use a homemade Kenai-style, short-handled rectangular net with a deep bag they had borrowed from a local friend and would work off the deeper-water side of the boat.

While Luke was getting the bag on his net untangled, Doug tried a few sweeps while I held the boat in position. To our surprise, Doug picked up two fish in about as many dips. I clubbed the fish and we all immediately had raised hopes for the morning.

Once Luke was ready, we started moving downstream, going just slightly faster than the current to keep the net bags open. Both Doug and Luke had tied off their nets to an 8-foot long 2 x 4 I had rigged across the bow to help hold the nets against the drag of the water. We hadn't gone far when Luke felt a fish hit his net. He raised the net up but the fish fell out. He had somehow turned the net while bringing it to the surface and the fish ended up on the outside of the net, rather than in the bag.

Luke took a while to figure out how to work with that rectangular net, but once he learned its secrets, he was hauling in fish with regularity. Doug had some previous experience dipnetting on Fish Creek, in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, and quickly put that experience to work. He managed to land "doubles" on three different occasions using both the Chitina-style net and the rectangular frame. Luke landed one "double" toward the end of the session. The guys took a few turns trading nets back and forth, just to see how the other style worked. We had made three separate passes down "our" section of river and had around 48 fish in the boat in a little over an hour. While planning the trip earlier, Doug and I had decided that if we could catch a total of 50 fish between us (30 for him and 20 for me), we would be happy. Doug's permit allowed him 65 fish for his family of five while my permit allowed 35 fish for my wife and I.

We motored back upstream for one final pass and figured we would keep whatever we caught. When we reached the end of the run, we had 65 fish in the boat. To say we were all thrilled at the outcome would be a serious understatement.

It was now maybe an hour after high tide and we were done fishing, after only dipnetting for about two hours total time. Doug planned to take 40 fish home and I would keep 25. Those numbers were well beyond our original goals, which we thought were somewhat optimistic to begin with, given our inexperience with techniques and specific locations.

Our reasoning in leaving a vehicle on either end of the dipnetting section of the river open to boats was that, if things were slow or we decided to stay on the water through the next high tide, we could just pull up by the bridge and still have access to a vehicle. We also thought that we could clean fish in that area when we had finished dipnetting. We initially planned to clean fish by the bridge until realizing all the cleaning gear and coolers were in the back of my truck, parked over by the city dock. We slowly motored back to the launch ramp, aware that we were overloaded with all the fish on board.

We passed several more recently launched boats out working the waters on our return trip. Nobody looked like they were catching many fish and we wondered why nobody had motored their boats up to dipnet our location upriver.

We pulled the boat onto its trailer and took pictures of all the fish. After driving over to the parking area by the bridge, we saw that the lot had also filled up since Doug had parked his rig earlier that morning. I could not maneuver my truck and trailered boat through the maze of parked vehicles to gain access to the river and fish cleaning.

We decided to return to Sterling and clean fish where we had stayed the previous night. Before leaving the dipnetting area we clipped the tailfins on all 65 fish to comply with the regulations on marking personal use fish.

After arriving back in Sterling, Doug collected the rest of his family and established an assembly line for cleaning his fish. I rough cleaned my 25 fish, saving the roe for future silver salmon fishing bait, and packed everything into a large cooler with ice. After rough cleaning the boat, I readied my gear for the trip back to Big Lake. Besides learning the obvious "where to" and "how to," we also learned that our gear needed a little work. My Chitina dipnet worked okay, but the handle was too long. The net hoop was on the small side and the net bag was not as deep as it should be to easily hold fish in the slower current.

The rectangular net worked well once we figured out how to lift it out of the water when fish hit. A clamp that held the frame together kept sliding loose, making it difficult, at times, to pull the net up in one piece. The bag also seemed to be excessively deep for the size of the opening.

I understand now why the style of dipnet frames, handles, and bags is somewhat different between Chitina and Kenai. I decided to pick up a net frame and bag more suited to the conditions on the Kenai and use my Chitina-style net as a second or backup net on future trips.

We further learned that the local folks we had met were, in fact, friendly and helpful in sharing suggestions and information regarding the personal use fishery. The fish themselves were larger and heavier, at least this year, than the "normal" Chitina sockeyes I was used to. And the fish were dime-bright, compared to the slight reddish color the Chitina fish have acquired by the time they travel up into the dipnetting area of the Copper River.

The Chitina personal use permit cost $25 through this 2003 season. The Kenai permit is free. I also found the round trip to Kenai from Big Lake to be 100 miles shorter than the trip to Chitina. I think this may just become my new dipnetting destination for the foreseeable future.

We had a lot of fun dipnetting red salmon that morning. The weather cooperated and the fish were there.

Luke commented that he had never seen so many fish in a boat before and couldn't wait to go dipnetting again. How can you top that?