Fishing in Alaska

Fishing in Alaska
A few years ago, Marsha and I went to Alaska. It was a great two-week vacation. I especially enjoyed fishing there. The first fishing experience was on the Kenai. It was a dreary cold and rainy day. We chartered a boat for a half a day and went out with four other people and the guide. After about an hour, I caught a nice 45 pound King Salmon that now lives on our library wall. As soon as I caught it, the guide made me put my fishing pole down - even though Marsha had not caught anything (and wanted to trade her turn over to me so I could continue fishing). I could not touch the pole the rest of the day. No one else in the boat even got a bite the entire time. It was quite disappointing not to be able to fish anymore. I just had to sit their miserably, in the cold drizzling rain.
A few days later we drove to an area a few hundred miles farther northeast that had a river called the Klutina. As we were driving by a convenience store, I saw a pick-up truck with a sign on it about fishing tours. It so happened that the driver of the truck was in the store. I asked him about the fishing, and he told me it was much better than the fishing on the Kenai. I wanted to fish again, so I made a fishing date for a few days later when we would be back through the area. Well, the day arrived and it was only the guide and me that went out in his boat. The river was much more beautiful than the Kenai. I caught fish after fish until he said, “that one is a nice big one, you should keep it.” We had only been fishing for a couple of hours and I was disappointed. But it was big and I kept it. I sat my pole down and he asked if I did not want to fish anymore. I told him about my experience on the Kenai. He grinned and said that all of the fish police were all on the Kenai and that none ever came over where we were and that I could fish until I wore out. Well, I was really excited and I did fish until my arms wore out. I caught about 18 huge King Salmon and lost about that many more that I had hooked because they were tougher than I was. What a great fishing trip. We then traveled to a beautiful town and got a motel room. It was about 11PM after I put Marsha to bed, and since it was still light, I decided to go fishing for pinks (A different type of salmon) from the bank of Valdez bay. Guys were lined up along the bank shoulder to shoulder fishing for the pinks. For some reason I was catching a lot. They were each from five to ten pounds and were great fighters. I caught one nearly every cast. I caught over 30 of them and gave them all away except for the limit which was five. I remember that I was fishing next to a retired M.D. who wasn’t catching any. He was retired because he said that he’d heard of Viagra early on and borrowed $100,000.00 and invested it in the company that put it on the market and made a fortune. So he quit medicine and started to play. He couldn’t fish very well, though, so I gave him some of my pink salmon. I brought my five fish back to the motel room and proceeded to clean them on a few newspapers right there on the carpet. Marsha woke up at 3AM to the smell of fish guts and my big bright grin and was eager to listen to my fishing adventure.
Another of the fun fishing experiences happened a little south of Anchorage. We were driving down the road and I looked over and saw a bunch of people fishing along a river. So I pulled over and jumped out to see what they were catching. I took Marsha to Anchorage and then came back to the river (in the middle of the night again) to fish. I started fishing but no one (including me) was having any luck except one little round faced, short guy a little up the river from me. He caught a few and then started home. As he was walking past me, I asked him what his secret was. He grinned and held up a beat-up old strange-looking lure and said, “you gotta have this.” I said do you want to sell it to me? He said, “no, but I’ll give it to you.” I said, “no, I don’t want you to do that, let me give you $3.00 for it.” He said, “no, $6.00”. “Nah,” I said, $3.50. He said, “okay”. I gave him the money and he gave me the old beat up lure. He grinned again and then said, “but it won’t do you any good unless you know how to use it.” He then proceeded to show me exactly where to throw the lure and exactly how to retrieve it. It was a little different and tricky. He told me that he was a full blooded Alaskan Eskimo and that he could fish anywhere anytime and catch as many as he wanted without a license. That made me jealous. He definitely looked like an Eskimo. He walked off and said, “good luck”. I cast out just like he told me to as best I could, and caught three nice big silvers one right after the other. That was the kind of salmon that these were - in three casts. Three was the limit and I left. No one else caught had caught a fish. That’s it, dad.