Absolutely fantastic weather today! We both got sun burned.
Abby and I spent almost 6 hours on the Kenai River fishing. The migrating fish count is down, but now that we know the river pretty well we still had dozens of strikes.
This run of fish are bigger than last week's and as a result we lost several to severed lines. We lost several due to the "combat fishing" conditions. There were a lot of "first time" fisherman who didn't have a clue as to what they were doing. Many times they would wade in between Abby and I (despite our pleas) and then they would snag our lines (a couple of times when we had fish on) and it would take a long time to resolve. Not to mention it caused us to lose our fish!
Despite the problems we were able to land 6 large Sockeye's and they are now (minus half of one we ate for dinner) residing in our freezer.
For those that are keeping track, Abby stayed dry today. The count is now Abby 4, Kenai River 2. If only the Astro's were this good!
One of the fish that Abby caught looked like it had been through a meat slicer. Turns out it was the result of a seal attack. I cut out the damaged portions and it was our main meal tonight. Speaking of cutting. During the filleting of the Salmon, I managed to "fillet my finger" so I am now sporting a bandage on my left index finger. In addition, I foolishly tried to stop a runaway salmon by applying pressure with my right index finger on the fly line. I now sport a matching bandage on this finger due to the line cutting and burning my finger. Glad I didn't bring my golf clubs. This hunting and gathering stuff is difficult!
We have new neighbors to the right of us. They live in California but they bought their RV from Superior RV on the feeder road just south of Woodlands Parkway. Small world.
For the first time in a long time, we didn't see a moose today.
Our freezer is about 90% full. As a result, we are suspending fishing operations until the Coho (silver) Salmon start their river migration. Hopefully this will occur before we leave next Tuesday for Seward. If not, we will be able to fish for Coho while spending the week in Seward.
Seward is a quaint little town whose motto is "a drinking village with a fishing problem". Sounds interesting!
Due to the cessation of fishing hostilities until the Coho arrive, we are driving to Homer tomorrow for a day of sightseeing and general goofing off.
In case you didn't see it, Kaileen Gaul wrote a very nice article in this week's Villager about our trip. It can be viewed at http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/woodlands/news/article_a05fce69-dbbd-54c2-9a05-7e7bb26ab65b.html. If the link doesn't work try http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/woodlands. Article is titled, "Couple mark territory along Alaska Highway". Thanks Kaileen, nicely done.
Late breaking news. It appears the device I use to notify folks of our GPS position is malfunctioning. It sent an erroneous "SOS" last night and Abby got a phone call from the International Rescue Center as did my brother in Florida. In case I can't this rectified and you still want notification of a new blog, put your email address in the "follow by email" block your email address. When the blog gets updated you will receive an email with the notification.
