Soldotna, Alaska July 25, 2013

Yesterday I went to see the dip netters with a friend. We went to Kenai at the mouth of the river and watched how they dip net. They have a net that has to be 5 foot in diameter or less. There is a pole on it about 12 to 14 feet long. They stand the net vertical in the ocean and wait for a fish to swim into the net. Then they turn the net with a tee handle on the end of the pole so the net is now horizontal, and hurry to the shore. The limit for fish caught starts at 25 for head of household and 10 more for each additional family member. When we watched, we didn't see anyone catching any fish.

After dinner I wanted to try fishing, and ended up catching one salmon. We had part of it for dinner tonight. It was very good.

Cindy is slowly improving and wanted to go for a ride this morning. She hadn't seen any fields of Fireweed, so I took her to a field I had seen yesterday. She got quite a few pictures of the blooming Fireweed. We also went to a small lake that was near the field of Fireweed. Cindy got quite a few pictures of the lake and a float plane that was parked on the lake.

We then went to the Cook Inlet by the mouth of the Kenai River where the dip netters were fishing. She thought it was interesting to see how they had tents and stayed on the beach while they are fishing. Today we saw quite a lot of fish being caught. One fish got caught in two nets and the fishermen had an argument about whose fish it was. The fisherman that let the other have it turned around and caught a bigger fish, so he was happy. One of the fishermen showed us his catch. He had about 10 fish and told us that residents of Alaska harvested about 500,000 salmon with dip nets per year. They all seemed to be pretty serious about it.

Before Cindy got too tired, we went and saw a private airport, which was a long field with the grass cut.

She was able to ride in the truck, but if I hit any bumps, she was in quite a bit of pain. She may be getting better, but she still is not ready to travel yet.

With the dip netters catching fish, I thought that the fishing on the river might get a little better, so I went out after dinner to see if I could catch any. I ended up catching 2 more salmon. I also had 2 more on, but they got away. I didn't see any others caught. Maybe it will be better tomorrow. I’m thinking of going out again in the morning.

Cindy had more pictures to put on the blog, but the internet is so slow that I will have to post the rest later. Sorry.

That’s it for today, thanks for visiting.