Sparks don't fly on this fishing trip

Outdoors in Alaska, by Howard Delo

The names have been changed to protect the embarrassed -- all except mine. Since I can't give this first-person account of our dipnetting adventures on the Kenai River without being identified with the "oops" factors, you know I was part of the "action."

We finally decided to try our hand dipnetting the sockeyes by driving down to Kenai and working the afternoon tide on July 14. I had been looking at the run-timing averages for the past 10 years posted on the ADF&G, Commercial Fisheries Division Web site. Their records showed that, on average, the first big pulses of fish were counted in the river about that date each year.

We knew the fish counts had been minimal so far this year. We also wanted to go during the middle of the week to avoid the crowds. It was a gamble. Apparently, about half the state's population had the same thoughts, but I'll get into that later.

My partner, let's call him Mac, had scheduling conflicts from the beginning. We were originally going to go on the 14th and 15th of July. He had a conflict so the dates were moved to the 15th and 16th. Then he discovered another conflict in his schedule. He was able to clear up the one on the 14th, but we were under the gun to be back by mid-afternoon on the 15th.

I met Mac and his oldest son, let's call him Aaron, at our prearranged pickup point the morning of the 14th and we were off. I had gassed up the boat the previous evening but we needed to stop in Anchorage to gas up the truck and a few extra containers for the return trip.

Being retired is great, but this fixed income business means I need to cut costs whenever possible. With gas 12-cents a gallon cheaper in Anchorage than here in the Valley, you can appreciate, or at least understand, my lack of local patronage.

The drive down went fine. We planned to stop in Soldotna so Mac could pick up his dipnet permit and Aaron could get his sportfishing license. The deal was that I would buy the gas and Mac and Aaron would buy all the food and launch fees for the two-day trip. Aaron's turn to buy was day one. When Aaron went to pay for his license, the machine rejected his debit card -- no money in the account -- "oops." Dad footed that bill and the cost of sandwiches and sodas too.

We arrived at the Kenai boat ramp almost two hours before high tide and ran into a line of vehicles waiting to launch that stretched from the ramps back beyond the fee station. We readied the boat for launching between the short advances toward the ramps. We finally had the boat in the water about 45 minutes after arriving at the site. This earned us a minor "oops" for underestimating the number of boats dipnetting on a mid-afternoon tide during mid-week.

I figured we still had at least an hour of good dipnetting in front of us. Boats coming in said the fish were thick and the dipnetting was great.

I turned the key expecting the engine to start immediately, as it had all season long -- but nothing happened. The engine was turning over but Mac quickly determined there was no spark. Now what? Mac is a pretty good mechanic and immediately pulled the cowling and started checking all sorts of things. There was fuel but no spark -- on any of the four cylinders. What could have happened?

Of course, being dead in the water on the dock had us in the way of everybody trying to launch or retrieve their boats, including one commercial fishing vessel that couldn't maneuver away from the dock because of us. We were losing precious time.

After an hour of checking this and trying that with no success, Mac figured that a switch someplace that kills the current to the engine must be tripped. He went over the engine block in fine detail and found nothing. He moved to the console.

Part two of this intrepid journey will appear in next week's column. Read it to see if they ever did catch any fish.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave a message for him at 352-2268 or by e-mailing editor@frontiersman.com.