Dipnetting!

Remember July?  Yes, we still have some catching up to do.  Well, the reds started running.  We watched the numbers every day.  And when they spiked, we were ready to head out.  But we had to wait a day because Tom was taking some drugs for fluid in his ears that were making him super sick and I had a bad cold.  So, the next day, we sucked it up, loaded our tiny car to the brim, and headed out to dip our giant nets and catch our household limit of 55 salmon.  

The weather was perfect.  The girls played with the girls from the tent next to ours.  And their dad had a two-inch deep bullet hole in his back.  The girls told me that after they dipnetted they were going to the "Dream House."  When I asked them what that was, they said: "You know when you're in jail for a long time, you can go stay there and they can help you.  It's nice."  That first evening, however, when I discovered our camping stove had broken and we would not be able to eat dinner (or breakfast, lunch, or dinner the next day...), their dad offered to help.  He spent quite awhile working with it until it was fixed.  Nice guy.  This is why I love dipnetting.  Everyone is so nice and it's a very communal experience.

The fishing was not nearly as good as we had hoped.  It didn't help that Tom and I were both not feeling great.  We caught a few that first night.  Tom was exhausted.  He had to haul the fish he caught in the heavy coolers of ice from the water from the river back up to our tent.  A man with literally a feather in his cap showed up out of nowhere and let Tom borrow his wheeled cart. Bless him. That night, we all slept terrible.  The girls didn't go to bed until after midnight.  The commercial fishing boats were coming in and going out all night.  At 6AM, dipnetting began again and Tom got back in the water.  He caught a giant fish, but he jumped out of the net as he was pulling it out.  Tom sort of tried to catch it as it flopped back into water and he hit his knee on a rock.  After a bit of a rest, he hopped back in the water.  The first run, he got the giant net caught on a rock out in the water.  After already feeling sick, hurting his knee, and having to fight the tide to get off the rock, Tom was stuck.  Guess who showed up to help?  The man with a feather in his hat.  He got in the water, grabbed Tom's hand, and the two of them were able to get Tom and the net out of the water.  After that Tom was wiped out.  After not sleeping all night, the girls were just crying on the beach the whole next day.  So, even though we were planning on staying two nights, we called it and packed up the car.  The girls were asleep in the car before we even got the trunk loaded.  Result: 14 salmon.  For the circumstances, we felt pretty good because no one around us was catching much either.  We have friends who were there that week who only caught 2 or 3 and a couple who didn't catch any.  Then there were other friends who went a few days later and caught all 55.  It's a gamble.  But despite it all, we had fun, we were saved by some interesting characters, and we're still eating salmon for dinner 2-3 times a month.