Dipnetting: The Real Alaskan Adventure

On the way to dipnetting, we had to pull over and see the "bore tide." When it's low tide, the entire inlet is made up of mudflats. There are signs everywhere warning you not to go into the mudflats because they are like quicksand and the tide comes in one big wave and you get caught in the mud and die. No gradual tide changes. One big wave comes in and then the tide is in. So, this one wave starts at the ocean and goes all the way up Cook inlet where we saw it on Turnagain Arm. It just keeps going. You can watch people surfing the Bore Tide on YouTube. There are only a few places in the World where this happens, and Cook Inlet, Alaska is the only place in the United States where you can see this phenomenon. And we saw it. Check. Now back on the road to start fishing!...

Intro to dipnetting: When someone has lived in Alaska for a full 12 months, he or she can purchase an Alaska Resident fishing license. This allows Alaska residents, between July 10 and July 31, to get in the water, with a net, at the mouth of the river to catch sockeye salmon ("reds"). Each head of household is allowed 25 fish per season with an additional 10 fish per family member (we could have caught 55 fish!). This year, the reds ran in record-breaking numbers. Over 230,000 fish ran up the river in one day. And nearly 1.5 million fish ran up the river in the month of July. This year we went with President Smith (member of the stake presidency). He's the king of dipnetting and he showed us the ropes. In the same amount of time we caught 27 fish, he caught 80 and threw 20 back because they were "too small." He went home with 60 giant fish. (Our 27 filled the two coolers we brought. We couldn't have fit any more fish if we wanted to!)

Since you've already seen the results of our dipnetting adventure (72 pounds of edible fillet meat!), this post will be about the "experience" of dipnetting. Tom will walk you through the process of fishing (He's wearing a yellow hat so you can follow him in all the pictures). You get suited up (preferably with a friend to join you in the water. Hi Logan!). Then you take this incredibly large and awkward net and walk it into the river as the tide goes out. You get in line and hop into the water with everyone else. You walk the net, with the current, about 300 yards. If you don't catch a fish, you pull out, walk it to the beginning, and start again. If you do feel a fish in your net, you give the net a good jerk (to get the fish caught in the net), and you try to pull the net out of the water as fast as you can before the fish gets out of the net. (This is by far the hardest part of the whole thing... we probably lost 30 fish because we never figured out the best way to get the fish caught in the net. The real pros can get a fish caught in the net and keep walking so they can catch 2-5 fish in one go.) Then you whomp the fish right on the nose (so you don't bruise the meat) and throw it in the cooler with the rest of the fish. Then you get back in the water and do it again!

When you're all done, you clean off all your fish and gut them on the beach. This means the beach is full of fish guts down by the water. And fish guts = lots of birds. Apparently real Alaskan children like to throw fresh fish guts up into the air and watch the seagulls dive bomb to get them. I'll wait a year before letting my kids be "real Alaskan children."

After the girls got in bed, it was my turn in the water. We camped right on the beach with everyone else. I got in the water at 9:30PM and fished until 11PM when all dipnets had to pull out of the water. (The day after we left, they opened it up to all night fishing for the first time in ten years because the salmon were running so thick. I'm bummed we missed that!) It looks like I'm not in the water as deep as Tom was, but all the boats were coming in and the waves were huge. I actually flooded my waders a few times (nothing major, but it was cold). I caught my first fish the second walk. It was totally by accident since I didn't really know what I was doing yet. I made Tom take a million pictures of it in case I never caught another fish. Then I caught 6 more and they were all giant compared to that first one. Fishing at night was a blast! There were less people and everyone was very into the communal experience. When I caught a big one, I felt better about the Scandanavian guy next to me saying: "Nice fish!" than I did about actually catching it. And since we all had to pull out of the water at 11PM, everyone was calling out things like: "25 minutes left!" and everyone was happy to see people pulling fish out of the water. Since only Alaska residents can dipnet, all of dipnetting is like this (people encouraging and helpful and communal), but at night, it was especially great. I felt great being an Alaskan!

Let me tell you, fishing in Alaska at 11PM was a beautiful experience!

The next morning, I got back in the water and fished another couple of hours, but it wasn't nearly as fun as night fishing.

So what did the girls do while we were fishing during the day? They played in the sand, of course (with Celia's friend, Sophie). And Sabrina also started eating it by the handful. I couldn't stop her with a binky or real food... so I banished her to the tent. Then the girls spent a long time playing in Sabrina's tent (inside our tent). They were rolling around laughing. Funny ladies. They had a great time. And other than Sabrina eating sand and Celia getting a bad sunburn on her neck (I put sunscreen on her!), it was a fabulous family outing. Definitely the same time next year!