We are enjoying our stay in Ninilchik overlooking the Cook Inlet. The weather has been good with the first couple of days chilly because of windy conditions.
Ken and Debbie decided to go clam digging yesterday. They loaded up their ATV and drove down the beach for their first experience of chasing these quick little buggers down through 3 feet of mud.
The best way to describe it would be to compare it to Bill Murray in "Caddy Shack" where he is trying to out wit the gopher. Remember the scenes? He sneaks up on the gopher in hopes of surprising it before it can run away. Same process. You sneak up on their beady little air tube and dig as fast as you can while the clam is headed "south" through the mud and the muck as quick as he can. Abby and I tried our hands at this 5 years ago and I decided to "supervise" this time. Abby decided she wanted to dig for clams too.
Ken and Debbie were quite successful!
Debbie was having a ball.
They got 18 before they drove home for the cleaning and cooking.
While Abby and I were walking back to the car we came across a guy dumping these halibut carcasses on the beach for the waiting Bald Eagles and Sea Gulls. Nothing goes to waste. The Bald Eagles nest in the bluffs overlooking the beach where the fishing boats are put in and taken out every day. As the boats move ashore, they dump the fish carcasses on the beach as a form of "natural recycling". The number of Bald Eagles on the bluffs is amazing.
Speaking of fishing. There are lots of rivers and lakes to fish in the local area. The only problem is the salmon are in between runs and should be returning any day now. We are waiting a few days before we go halibut fishing as the best time to fish for them is at "slack" tide. That is when the tide goes from being an outgoing tide to an incoming tide or the opposite. Right now due to the large negative tides this week, the differential creates a vary large current with very short slack time. Next week the tides will be much different and in theory we can catch larger halibut.
Yesterday Ken and I fished in Deep Creek where we saw some Pink Salmon but were cut short because we ran into a cow Moose and her calf munching along the river bank. We identified ourselves as humans like they tell you in Denali NP and reversed course.
Today we drove all over the Kenai today looking for salmon in the rivers. There just a few stragglers in most of the streams. A local told us they are waiting for a good southern wind to get the Sockeye Salmon to start moving into the rivers. The King Salmon should be peaking some time next week in the Kasilof River. The Silver Salmon start their normal migration around August 1st.
In the mean time, Ansel Abby is taking more pictures of the flora and fauna plus the wild life.
