Dipnetting

Last weekend Sunnifa and I went dipnetting for salmon down outside of Chitina. It was a good time. In a nutshell, dipnetting is when you use a big net, mine is approx. 2' x 3', on a long pole (see pic at L, that's me), and scoop salmon out of the water. We started on Sat. at about 10ish and by the end of the day we had five. Four Reds and a King. Between the two of us we can get up to 30 salmon. There are no size limits, but you can only keep one King.

We went down with a few people that I work with and a few others. About ten of us total. It was a fun camping trip. Very dusty and a little windy but still fun.

OK, so, like, out of the nutshell, a dipnet is a big net on a long pole. The pole that I used is 12'. Some people were using 25' poles! The 12-footer is somewhat easy to handle but the 25-footer is tough. If you don't have the technique down, you're screwed. So anyways, the salmon are coming up the river, in this case the Copper River, and you scoop the net with the current and hope to catch a salmon coming up against the current. It's not as easy as it sounds. You are in hip-waders and the river is rushing and you are concentrating on keeping good footing in the silt and rocks and not falling in and getting swept away in the cold water and trying to keep your net deep enough and upright and, oh yeah, if you feel a fish hit you have to get the sucker in PDQ. Get your butt up here and try it sometime. The only catch on that is that you have to be an Alaska resident. Meaning you have to have lived here for one year before you can (legally) dipnet. The fish were really coming on Sunday. A few of the guys hung around and got another 10-15. As for me, I just wanted to hit the road and get home. It's a 300 mile drive (one way) and we still had to fillet the ones we got and get them packaged up and try to get to bed at a decent hour. 3:30am comes awfully early after a weekend of driving and fishing.

Sorry about the sideways picture. I can't figure out how to turn the darned thing.
Killer scenery, eh? What kind of view did you have last weekend???