Video Update!!! (Mom and Dad's visit)

THIS BEAR WAS IN OUR FISHING HOLE!!!

Damn thing was fishing where we wanted to fish. I debated on wrestling him, but Danielle insisted that I shouldn't hurt a helpless creature :)



This is an underwater video of the fish congregating in a NO FISHING zone. You can see some HUGE rainbow trout in this video too.



A lot of people don't actually know how red (sockeye) salmon are caught. It's hard to explain, and definitely requires practice to perfect.... but here's the low-down. These fish stop eating once they hit the fresh water as they only have one thing on their mind... SPAWN. Because of this, it's near impossible to get them to bite on anything. To catch them, you basically have to snag them. However, the catch is, you can only snag them IN THE MOUTH!! You can see how that would be difficult. You basically use a fly on the end of your line, drag the line across the bottom, and hope that your leader finds its way across the open mouth of a salmon swimming up stream, which will eventually lodge the fly into the side of the mouth. Below is the technique.



Danielle catching a MASSIVE red salmon (while I'm trying to fillet our catch). She was determined to catch her limit of 6 and she did it.... Just in time to help me too :)



This is a shot of Danielle catching another Red salmon. You can also see what happens after the catch... WARNING - a little gruesome. What wasn't shown in the video is Danielle ripping out the gills with her hands. Something you have to do to make sure they bleed out in the water, don't mutate anymore than necessary, prevent them from pulling on your stringer, and making the fish easier to filler without spoiling the meat.



This was a scary moment. Dad hooked into a MASSIVE fish. It was likely a big King Salmon which easily get larger than 50 pounds on this stretch of the river. Anyway, the video shows him playing with the fish for a while and then the line breaking. He then looses his balance and falls in the water.... which is VERY dangerous. This is dangerous because you have waders on and once those things fill up with water, there is no getting back out of the water (many people die each year in the Kenai River and are never found because of this). Secondly, the near freezing temperatures of the water can easily cause hypothermia. Luckily we had a warm car and change of clothes waiting for him.



Here is dad reeling in the first halibut of our charter. Not too shabby!




That's all for now!